PORTABLE HOSPITAL, an IIT Madras startup development for CORONAVIRUS patients

A portable hospital unit has been developed by a startup from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. This portable hospital can be installed anywhere with the help of four people just within two hours. ‘MediCAB‘ is the name of the portable hospital unit which is developed by Modulus Housing. 

The IIT said that MediCAB is said to be a decentralized approach for detecting, screening, identifying, isolating, and treating coronavirus patients in their respective local communities. The innovative portable hospital unit has recently been installed in the Wayanad district located in Kerala. It has been done to treat the COVID 19 infected patients there. The startup is working forward to developing more such micro-hospitals that can be installed rapidly all across the country. 

The composition of MedCAB~ This innovative hospital unit is foldable. It consists of four zones in it, namely- a doctor’s room, a medical room or ward, an isolation room, and twin bed ICU, and all this is maintained at the negative pressure.

This innovation was made possible because of the successful collaboration of the startup with SCTIMST i.e. Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology. It was SCTIMST which provided the inputs on the certification and customization necessary for the development of this hospital. 

In the year 2018, two IIT alumni founded the company Modulus Housing. The company was supported by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras Incubation Cell and possessed a vision to revolutionize housing through modular prefab structures.

To support the fight against coronavirus, the company have re-purposed their designs. Mr. Shreeram Ravichandram who is the Chief Executive Officer said that “The outcome of this pilot project in Kerala will help in proving the applicability of the technology and advantages of micro-hospitals, with MediCAB as an instant infrastructure solution. It can be easily assembled in eight hours by four people. When folded, our collapsible cabins are reduced 5 – fold, making it very cost-effective for transportation. He also said that “Health Infrastructure is crucial in fighting any pandemic. with a contagious disease such as COVID 19, it is essential to have the smart health infrastructure to screen, contain, and treat people. Unlike urban areas where there is plenty of existing infrastructures that can be converted to hospitals, rural areas do not have a lot of infrastructures. It is difficult to construct buildings from scratch as a requirement is immediate. As the rural population density is relatively low, more micro-hospitals help greatly in taking COVID 19 cases.”

 Modulus Housing company is currently working on a dual design where these micro-hospitals can be rapidly launched as coronavirus isolation wards. When the post era of COVID 19 will arrive, these portable hospitals can be transformed into micro-hospitals/clinics in rural India where the medical infrastructure needs to be increased.

The company’s manufacturing unit has been set up at Chngalpet which is located about thirty-five kilometers from Chennai.

This great initiative might make a huge difference in this worsening situation. The nation’s COVID record is crossing a higher bar every day. As per the recent records, the nation has a tally of a total of 13,36,874 cases with more than 1 lakh cases added in just the last two days.