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SINGAPORE – A hospital has created portable systems that can convert wards, intensive care units (ICUs) and operating rooms into negative pressure isolation rooms in a matter of hours to house patients with infectious diseases.
One of the two transparent chamber-shaped systems at Singapore General Hospital (SGH), called the Portable AnteRoom System for Containment (SG-Sparc), can be installed behind the entrance to a ward or ICU. It measures 1.2 m by 1.6 m and is 2.4 m high.
After sealing any gaps between the inlet and the system, a Hepa filter unit is turned on on top of the system to create a negative pressure environment within the patient room so that infectious droplets and air from the room cannot leak out into hallways.
The chamber has two doors, one at the entrance of the room and the other inside the room, facing the patient. When the inner door is opened for medical personnel to enter or leave the room, the contaminated air flows into the chamber and through the Hepa filter, so that the clean air re-enters the room.
The 70 kg system takes an hour to install and was installed at SGH’s Medical ICU in July. One more of the same type will soon be added to the medical ICU.
The foldable SG-Sparc can also be fixed in single or multi-bed rooms with infectious disease patients. The size of the system is customizable and each takes two weeks to manufacture.
The other SG-Sparc system, used in operating rooms, is larger to allow the passage of an ICU bed, a ventilator, and medical staff. Measuring 3.8 m by 1.6 m and 2 m high, the system prevents droplets from escaping from the room while performing surgical operations, including aerosol-generating procedures, on infectious patients.
The 150kg camera takes two hours to install. A system has been installed in an SGH operating room.
PHOTO: THE A * STAR INSTITUTE OF BIOENGINEERING AND NANOTECHNOLOGY (IBN)
The two systems were developed by SGH anesthesiologists, in collaboration with the local biomedical incubator The Biofactory. The project was funded by SingHealth Duke-NUS’s Urgent Covid-19 Research Fund, with input from The Biofactory.
Compared to existing systems, SG-Sparc has a combination of advanced features like non-contact sensors and a higher air filtration rate, making it the first of its kind, said Dr. Mavis Teo, a consultant to the Department. of Anesthesiology of SGH.
In a room equipped with the system, air can be filtered up to 300 times per hour, compared to an operating room where air is filtered 12 times per hour. Medical personnel can open the system doors by shaking the sensor without touching it.
The inventions come at a time when the number of isolation rooms abroad is insufficient to withstand the rise of Covid-19. It is also expensive and time-consuming to build isolation rooms.
An SG-Sparc system costs half as much as renovating an ICU room into an isolation room, said Gabriel Tan, program director for The Biofactory.
Said Dr Teo, who is the co-investigator of the project: “We have seen how hospitals in Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, all quite developed countries, struggled when they ran out of negative pressure isolation rooms during the Covid-19 pandemic. . ”
“It got us thinking if there is a way to quickly and temporarily convert existing patient rooms, especially ICU wards, to care for infectious patients when the need arises,” he added.
SG-Sparc has received great interest from local and foreign hospitals, said Mr. Tan.
To ensure and test the ability of the system to contain viruses, scientists from the Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research released live non-pathogenic viruses into a simulated patient room installed with SG-Sparc. No microbes escaped from the room.
SG-Sparc is the third collaboration between SGH and The Biofactory, after SG-Safe, a foldable swab test system, and SG-Safer, an isolation X-ray cabinet.
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