Michael Allswede
Michael Allswede, DO, Director, Residency in Emergency and Disaster Medicine, Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center
Dr. Allswede is Director of the Strategic Medical Intelligence (SMI) initiative, which is a forensic epidemiology program he developed in 1999. This program was developed in Pittsburgh and employs locally accessible volunteer doctors to improve early warning and detection of bioterrorism so as to prevent its occurrence and improve the medical community's response if it occurs. SMI is directed at creating partnerships between local clinical medical leaders, public health officials, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Dr. Allswede is the Program Director of the Residency in Emergency and Disaster Medicine at Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center located in Johnstown PA. This program combines excellence in training at a Level I Trauma Center with disaster medicine training to specifically address the national need for better trained medical leadership in terrorism and disaster events. This program is directed at deficits noted in the 2006 Institute of Medicine's report on the Future of Emergency Care.
Allswede's fluency in bridging both academic emergency medicine and real-life hospital and crisis response operations is reflected in both his teaching and government appointments. His academic career includes a posting as Associate Residency Director for the University of Michigan's Program in Emergency Medicine. Allswede is Principal Investigator and creator of the "Pittsburgh Matrix," a hospital planning tool for use in addressing various bioterror challenges according to the scope of the threat and the timeline of detection. Allswede is also a collaborator on a syndromic detection and biosurveillance project. He also teaches a bioterrorism course at Sandia National Laboratory sponsored by the University of New Haven. His numerous academic and popular publications focus on bioterrorism detection, response, and treatment.
Allswede's public service includes developing a prototype State-level training and management system for use in responding to incidents involving the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Dubbed RaPiD-T (for Recognition, Protection, Decontamination - Triage and Treatment), the program offers a multi-disciplinary approach to crisis management for emergency response practitioners. Allswede developed RaPiD-T by drawing on his experience as an instructor in the U.S. Department of Defense Domestic Preparedness Program, authorized by the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici legislation of 1996; in this role he has trained Metropolitan Medical Strike Team members in Detroit, New York, Chicago, and Boston. In recognition of this work, Allswede was appointed by Attorney General Janet Reno to the National Domestic Preparedness Office (NDPO) State and Local Advisory Board. (The NDPO was the precursor to the Department of Homeland Security.) Allswede has also represented the U.S. Secret Service in a NATO technology development project and is a consultant on emergency response technologies.
Concurrent with his medical career, Dr. Allswede served 8 years in the US Army Reserve, volunteering for duty in Desert Storm with the 24th Mech Inf BDE, and again in South America to support ongoing anti-drug interdiction activities. Dr. Allswede retired as a Captain, and Commanding Officer of the 408th Clearing Company, a front line medical unit tasked for management of chemical, biological, radiation, and traumatic casualties.
Allswede received his DO at the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery in 1988 and served a rotating internship at Detroit Osteopathic Hospital. He was a post-graduate Emergency Medicine Resident at Chicago Osteopathic Medical Center and completed a critical care fellowship at Chicago Medical School and Cook County Hospital.