IIT-incubated start-up develops portable hospitals

These negative pressure portable hospitals have a durability of around 25 years. They can also be shifted in the future for any disaster response within a week.

ZeeWebDesk ● Updated: June 14, 2021 1:40 pm | Edited By: PUSHKAR TIWARI

In order to strengthen infrastructure in hospitals to fight COVID-19, the Centre had come up with a ‘Project Extension Hospitals’ initiative. It invited private sector companies, donor organizations, and individuals to support various projects of national importance.

The Centre then came across innovative modular hospitals that are an extension of hospital infrastructure and can be built adjacent to an existing hospital building.

The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India identified requirements of close to 50 hospitals in states where the highest number of COVID-19 cases were reported.

It informed on Sunday (June 13, 2021) that ‘Modulus Housing’, a start-up incubated at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) has developed the MediCAB hospitals.

This enables building a 100-bedded extension facility in 3-weeks time and are designed with a dedicated zone of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) that can accommodate various life-support equipment and medical devices.

“These negative pressure portable hospitals have a durability of around 25 years, and they can also be shifted in the future for any disaster response in less than a week,” the official statement read.

These rapidly deployable hospitals will also plug a major health infrastructure gap in India’s fight against COVID-19, especially in rural areas and smaller towns.

The Office of Principal Scientific Advisor to GoI said that it has been actively working towards securing CSR support to implement these projects in different areas across the nation.

The first batch of 100 bedded hospitals is being commissioned at Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur, Maharastra’s Amravati, Pune, Jalna and Punjab’s Mohali. A 20-bed hospital is also being commissioned at Chhattisgarh’s Raipur.

Bengaluru in Karnataka will also have one each of 20-, 50-, and 100-beds in the first phase.

The Office of PSA said that it has also collaborated with Tata Projects Ltd to deploy modular hospitals at multiple sites in Punjab and Chhattisgarh.

“They have initiated work on 48 bedded modular hospitals in Gurdaspur and Faridkot (Punjab). Expansion of ICU at multiple hospitals in Chhattisgarh including Raipur, Jashpur, Bemetara, Kanker, and Gaurella are also underway,” it said.

Meanwhile, India on Monday (June 14) reported 70,421 new COVID-19 cases – the lowest single-day count in the past 72 days.

The new infections pushed the coronavirus caseload to 2,95,10,410. The COVID-19 death toll also climbed to 3,74,305 with 3,921 more fatalities.