NATO AJMEDP-3-1 PDF

MEDICAL INTELLIGENCE INTRODUCTION

Medical intelligence is defined in detail in AAP6; but in summary it is the result of analysis of all-source information regarding health threats, foreign medical capabilities and other health topics of relevance to national or NATO military operations.¹ The analysis is produced with the intent of providing decision advantage to government policy-makers and military commanders regarding health policy and strategic and tactical operations.

The individual nations that comprise NATO and partners align the responsibility for medical intelligence analysis differently. Many nations assign the responsibility to the medical elements of one of the nation’s military services. Other nations assign the responsibility to the nation’s defence intelligence service. Some nations have adopted a hybrid approach where the responsibility for the medical intelligence mission is shared by both the military medical service and an intelligence organization. This is not necessarily because they find collaboration easy and smooth, but because both disciplines hold important keys to achieving an optimal outcome. There are indeed advantages and challenges with each organizational framework, but the goal remains to provide decision advantage to the nation and the alliance on complex medical topics affecting the military, the health of the force, or national security. The constraints that govern the activity of medical services given by the Geneva Convention are discussed in Annex D.

The organizational framework each nation adopts for their medical intelligence effort impacts important factors affecting the information, analytic methodologies, scope and production and dissemination of the final medical intelligence product. Nevertheless, it is not the intent of the NATO Medintel Panel to prescribe organization or analytic structure to our member nations. The content of this document does not represent consensus within the member nations the way a STANAG does. Instead, our goal in producing this handbook is to offer examples of perspectives and methodologies that have proven successful in providing decision advantage in some nations. Our hope is that in sharing these successful examples we can provide instruction and guidance that other nations in the alliance can adopt and adapt to their own efforts for the improvement of the larger NATO medical intelligence capability, and that a common understanding of the diverse perspectives on medical intelligence will facilitate cooperation and sharing among all the NATO nations.

¹ Medical intelligence (medintel) is the product of processing medical, bio-scientific, epidemiological, environmental, infrastructure, capabilities and other information related to human or animal health. This intelligence, being of a specific technical nature, requires informed medical and other specialist expertise.”