Taiwan's top military hospital is building out battlefield medicine capacity, a sign the island is preparing for wartime and disaster casualties.

• Tri-Service General Hospital is training small, mobile surgical teams that deploy close to the front line to stop bleeding and perform lifesaving surgery.
• The goal is keeping wounded people alive long enough to reach a real hospital, not full hospital care in the field.
• Doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists and medics train with the military about once a month, rotating through different specialties.
• The hospital built a virtual reality trauma training system with HTC that simulates mass-casualty events like an earthquake sending 15 wounded people to the emergency room at once.
• VR cuts the staff, space and money normally needed for drills, and trainees can repeat scenarios and review mistakes.

Outlook: Taiwan wants to expand the training to harsher conditions like no power or water, and is looking for partners abroad with more combat medicine experience.