“OPERATING ROOM IN A BOX” UNFOLDS

At first, it looks like a nor­mal ship­ping con­tainer. But push a but­ton, and a minute-​​and-​​a-​​half later, out unfolds an oper­at­ing room, 20 feet long and 8 feet wide.
“It looks like a cicada com­ing out,” an Army engi­neer says of the pro­to­type Future Medical Shelter System.
The Army’s cur­rent mobile oper­at­ing room comes in two con­tain­ers, and it’s a pain in the butt to set up. “You’ve got to man­u­ally unfold the exist­ing con­tainer, which takes a fair amount of time, and then you’ve got to phys­i­cally unload all of the stuff from one ISO con­tainer into one like this one,” offers an Army pro­gram man­ager.
The FMSS shel­ter is pow­ered by a 24 volt bat­tery stan­dard for most mil­i­tary vehi­cles and offers pro­tec­tion against bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal agents, unlike its pre­de­ces­sors. The Army’s pro­to­type was built by Y12 National Security Company out of Oak Ride, Tennessee. But two other com­pa­nies have designed the mobile oper­at­ing rooms, includ­ing St. Johnsbury, Vermont’s Mobile Medical International. Inside its ver­sion of the operating-​​room-​​in-​​a-​​box, there are “two sur­gi­cal sta­tions or four patient care sta­tions, inte­grated med­ical gas, power and LED light­ing sys­tems,” and inte­grated envi­ron­men­tal con­trols.
Folks at the Army’s Telemedi cine and Advance Technology Research Center are now test­ing out the FMSS, with an eye towards tough­en­ing it up against the ele­ments. But for now, there’s no cash to build a new shel­ter. “Congress ini­tially funded the pro­gram, and no addi­tional money has been appro­pri­ated for the sec­ond pro­to­type,” says the Armed Forced Press Service.

September 9th, 2004 | Medic! | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.