Philips introduces mobile ICUs for India to tackle pandemics like COVID-19

New Delhi: Royal Philips, a global leader in health technology, has introduced its path-breaking mobile Intensive Care Units (ICUs) for India. Designed to meet the critical-care requirements of patients, each pre-fabricated ICU has a capacity for nine beds and will be locally manufactured by Philips in India. Each ICU unit can be assembled in one day at the chosen site.

Leveraging its clinical, technical and design expertise, Philips has developed these portable ICUs to address the challenging need of critical-care services in India. These portable ICUs will be helpful to government agencies and organizations looking to enhance community outreach and to mitigate the impact of natural disasters and pandemics like the ongoing COVID-19.

Spread over an area of 1380 square feet, these self-sufficient units require only electricity and water connection at site to become operational. Each of these portable ICUs comes equipped with state-of-the-art critical care infrastructure such as independent patient cubicles, anti-bacterial paint to avoid cross contamination and high-end washrooms with self-disinfection facility. These ICUs can be furnished with medical equipment such as ventilators, defibrillator, central monitoring station and Continuous Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) machines with appropriate supporting infrastructure like back-up power, oxygen and vacuum supply.

Commenting on the prospects of the portable ICUs, Daniel Mazon, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Philips Indian Subcontinent said “Aligned with the government’s commitment to providing quality and accessible healthcare to the population in our country, we are proud to introduce our state-of-the-art mobile ICUs for India. We believe that this solution will help the country to tackle COVID-19 in an effective manner as it enables healthcare institutions to increase their bedding capacities.  Additionally, this solution will be significant in the long term to address critical care requirements. As a company, Philips is committed to improving 3 billion lives annually by 2030 and India continues to play a key role in enabling us to get closer to achieving that objective.”

Sharing his opinion on the solution, Dr. Bijendra Kumar Sinha, Senior Consultant – Minimal Access Bariatric and GI Surgery, Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurgaon highlighted “Considering the burden that healthcare institutions are facing due to the ongoing pandemic, these innovative ICUs will play a positive role in quickly ramping up patient capacity for hospitals. These units will also help in delivering quality critical care to patients in the shortest time-frame possible.”

Further elaborating on the operational effectiveness of the product, Mr. Mahipal Singh Bhanot, Zonal Director – Fortis Healthcare said “The portable ICU solution by Philips India, provides all the modern technologies with portability. This will offer superlative edge in treatment of isolated patients, in disaster management and for community outreach. Additionally, it will enable streamlining of hospital workflows without the need to change their protocols for infectious patients, while maintaining patient and staff safety. This can be a productive asset to have, especially when this is useful in adding additional beds to hospitals in a much reduced time, which means rapid ramp up of hospital’s bed capacity.”