CCC Builds Portable ICU Units to Combat the COVID-19 Pandemic

Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) in collaboration with the open source project CURA, successfully converted a container into a portable Intensive Care Unit (ICU) as part of its capacity building efforts in the GCC.  CURA (acronym for “Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments” and also “Cure” in Latin) proposes a quick-to-deploy solution to expand emergency facilities and ease the pressure on healthcare systems treating patients infected by coronavirus. CCC is in the process of manufacturing more units to support hospitals and communities as they struggle to treat an increasing number of patients with respiratory infections. CURA aims to facilitate the work of medical staff in avoiding cross infection and hospital bottle-neck. CCC expects to commercialise and produce more CURA units which will be needed internationally in the next few months.

CURA is an open-source design for emergency ICU units.  Each CURA pod is fast to be mounted outside a hospital and is as safe as a regular isolation ward. It uses repurposed shipping containers to create plug-in Intensive-Care Units (ICU) with biocontainment through negative pressure that can restrict the COVID-19 virus from leaving the chamber. Through erecting CURA containers, CCC aims to improve the efficiency of the existing design solutions of field hospitals, producing a compact ICU pod that is quick-to-deploy and safe to work in for medical professionals.

Each unit is hosted in a 20-foot intermodal container, repurposed with biocontainment equipment. An extractor creates indoor negative pressure, complying with the standards of Airborne Infection Isolation Rooms AIIRs. Two glass windows carved on the opposite sides of the containers are meant for doctors to always get a sense of the status of patients both inside and outside the pods. Each pod works autonomously and can be promptly shipped to any location around the world by land, sea or air, adapting to the needs of the local healthcare infrastructure.

The pod contains all the medical equipment needed for two ICU patients, including ventilators and monitors as well as intravenous fluid stands and syringe drivers. The unit is connected to the rest of the hospital by an inflatable structure, which serves as storage and changing rooms. Potentially, the inflatable unit can be used to connect more than one pod to create multiple modular configurations, either in proximity to a hospital or as a self-standing field hospital.

The ICU Pods are reusable in case of a future emergency as they are weather resistant, easily stored and quickly reassembled units which provide easy and safe storage of equipment. Also, the pods are designed to be reused for other applications once the emergency is over. They are fully functional 15m² units that can be reused in CCC camps as training rooms, medical testing facilities or donated as safe classrooms in developing countries or medical wards in refugee camps.

More information about Consolidated Contractors Company is available at www.ccc.net.

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