Bureau Carlo Ratti, led by a team of a dozen members, including divisions of MIT and Philips, has developed a project for the resuscitation of infectious patients based on a 20-foot shipping container. It is a commonly available “building material” that is easy to transport by ship, train or truck. The necessary bio-isolation is provided inside by a lower pressure than outside: the module meets the standards developed in connection with the spread of Covid-19 for hospitals in the PRC.
The project is called CURA, from the Latin for "medicine", but it is also an English abbreviation for Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments: containers can be tied together with inflatable passages. If one can accommodate two patients with ventilators and droppers, then a series of modules will result in a whole hospital for more than 40 people. Each unit is self-contained, so it can be installed anywhere, but CURA is also suitable for hospitals where there is not enough space in the intensive care unit: the modules can be placed in the car park.
The project combines the speed of deploying medical tent facilities, which have little control over the spread of infection, with the reliability and safety of prefabricated hospitals, which require immeasurably more time and money to build. CURAs are not only suitable for combating Covid-19 and can move wherever they are needed.
All project documentation
posted in open access, everyone is invited to cooperate in its revision. A pilot CURA is currently being built for a hospital in northern Italy, financed by UniCredit.
