swarm team

Exploring what naval drone swarms can teach medicine: how hybrid teams coordinate under pressure, act with partial information, and practice swarming as a skill. Lessons from autonomy and defense applied to high-stakes medical teamwork.

Swarm teams run on positional relationships — ER with Surgery, not Chris with June. That subtle shift changes everything. The stories teams carry, the ripple effects of each encounter, and the need to remember the human inside the role all shape whether a swarm succeeds or fractures. Systems must train for this reality.

Swarm teams are temporary, self-organizing groups that form in moments of crisis—like a code blue—to solve a single urgent problem. Unlike intact teams, they have no shared history, culture, or established hierarchy. This post explores what makes swarm teams unique in medicine and why understanding them is key to improving performance under pressure.