THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Imagine a hospital that can be folded and transported in just one trailer. All it would take is a few hours with less than five people to arrange the facility.
The state-of-the-art customisable hospital for Covid- 19 management is developed by Sree Chithra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) which has labelled its latest innovation as ‘Four Zone deployable MediCAB’. “It is a deployable emergency response field unit which will help scale up the health infrastructure in minimal time and is useful when the existing amenities get overwhelmed,” said Asha Kishore, SCTIMST director.
She further said the four-zone layout helps to separate the suspected, positive and critical patients. The deployable hospital is customisable and can be transported and deployed during emergency and disaster management. The institute has joined hands with IIT Madras to develop MediCAB. The four zones are health workers’ zone, suspected zone, a ward for positive patients and ICU. The idea was conceived by the engineers of the biomedical technology wing of the institute. They also got the expert opinion from Dr Shareek P S, infectious diseases specialist at SUT Hospital and PRS Hospital, before the pilot installation at Chennai and Wayanad in June and July respectively.
According to the institute, Modulus, a Startup in IIT Madras research park, had signed a pact with Sree Chithra for a collaborative effort to develop deployable field hospital structures to combat Covid-19. The first such hospital was set up at Chengalpet in Chennai with a 30-bedded ward and ICU at a cost of `33.80 lakh. The second project was carried out at Varadoor primary health care centre in Wayanad where a 12-bed ward was set up at `16 lakh.