SABRN Defence & Space is creating a decentralised geographically unconstrained mini-mobile field hospital.
This expeditionary hospital can rapidly integrate into the host nation’s military capability and will enable deployment of advanced medical and surgical capability as far forward as possible to the combat casualty.
With the ‘just-in-time’ and ‘just-in-case’ trained frontline healthcare workers supported by healthcare specialists via remote telementoring, significantly greater numbers of combat casualties will be saved.
Defence LifePods – Non-Medical Features
The Defence LifePods are designed to minimise the physical, thermal and electromagnetic footprints as much as possible whilst still providing the best possible healthcare at the frontline.
The Defence LifePods involve integration of numerous medical and non-medical innovations, and combines the concepts of ‘adjacent possibles’ and ‘blue-sky’ technologies to maximise survival of our combat casualties.
SABRN’s ‘plug-and-play‘ design allows simple integration into currently existing operational systems to enable uninterrupted clinical care provision to the combat casualty from the Point-Of-Injury to the Role 3 Hospitals.
The infrastructure with the Defence LifePods enable rapid pre-hospital care that can be transitioned into early surgical intervention in the field and allows for prolonged care of the patient in the field.
The Defence LifePods are compact, with the largest variant being smaller than a tradiational 10-foot shipping container.
The Defence LifePods are scalable, with ample ability to reproduce en masse to enable distribution to the many geographically dispersed contested areas.
The domain-agnostic nature of the Defence LifePods allows functionality in the land, air, sea and littoral zones.
The vehicle-agnostic nature of the Defence LifePods allows transportability by an large variety of vehicles including unmanned and manned vehicles, as well as military and civilian vehicles.
The Defence LifePods will be transportable using trucks, trains, planes (e.g. C130s), helicopters, ships, hovercrafts, amphibious vehicles, and others.
The Defence LifePods are designed to function in remote, austere and hostile environments, including in desert, alpine, jungle, urban and sub-Arctic environments.
On-board Electronic Medical Record Systems (EMR) and Informatics will enable data collection, integration, analysis and transfer to allow performance improvement and optimisation. Data from the Defence LifePod EMR will be able to integrate with whichever nation is providing the Role 2 or Role 3 combat health support that the patient is being transported to.
Surgical sterility in the Defence LifePods is possible by integration of novel air decontamination and surface decontamination technologies.
Air decontamination in the Defence LifePods is achieved using a plasma based system that can remove particulate matter (bacteria and viruses) in the air by 99% in 12 minutes, with less than 10 colony forming units/m3 once air decontamination is achieved. Air velocity at the top of the operating table is approximately 0.25 m/s, comparable to most tertiary hospital operating theatres.
Surface decontamination of surgical areas in the Defence LifePods is achieved using novel blue-light technologies that can reduce surface particulate matter (bacteria and viruses) by approximate 80-90%.
Communications resilience in the Defence LifePods is achieved by integrating WIFI, Bluetooth, Mobile, and Satellite (LEO and GEO) systems that can be integrated into the available secure Defence network.
Non-GPS tracking systems will be incorporated into the Defence LifePods to further enable resilience and contingency.
To make supply chain logistics more efficient and to optimise ‘just-in-time’ delivery of precious resources to remote-austere locations, RFID & Barcode technology in conjunction with GeoJSON format for mapping accurate Geospatial data indicating the exact location of the Defence LifePods.
The Defence LifePods will be ‘Faraday-Cage’ enabled to minimise the electromagnetic signature resulting from energy intensive medical equipment.
The Defence LifePods will incorporate electromagnetic protection devices that would enable spoofing and can act as towed decoys as electronic countermeasure systems to avoid detection by adversaries.
SABRN is working with several collaborators to develop energy resilience by incorporating novel technologies (including radioisotope-based energy sources and micro-turbine-based energy sources) to complement more traditional energy supply systems.
Defence LifePods – Medical Features
The Defence E-LifePods are designed to be an integrated ED-OT-ICU capability that can provide pre-hospital, surgical, and post-operative intensive care to the injured patient.
The Defence E-LifePods are designed to contain better diagnostic technologies (including ultrasound and xray) closer to the frontline to enable faster and better clinical decision making.
The Defence E-LifePods are designed to carry approximately 24 hours of oxygen, ventilator, defibrillator, automated chest compression device, blood products (within a refridgerator), in addition to most products available in a Role 1 hospital.
The modularised design of the Defence E-LifePods will allow selection of technologies or capabilities necessary for specific missions. The Defence S-LifePods will enable delivery of additional equipment during the casualty extraction phase if necessary.
Minimally invasive surgical technologies (e.g. laparoscopic surgical equipment) will be available for the Defence E-LifePods if required. This will enable early return-to-duty for soldiers affected by non-battle injuries that are amenable to minimally invasive surgical procedures (e.g. laparoscopic appendicectomy or cholecystectomy).
Similarly, technologies such as Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) and Intra Cranial Pressure (ICP) Monitoring can be incorporated into the Defence LifePods if needed during the extrication phase.
The Defence LifePods are designed to provide care for human and K9 casualties.
The Defence E-LifePods can accommodate for more casualties if necessary. In overwhelmed environments, the Defence Lifepods has a capacity of transporting three supine patients, or one supine patient and six seated patients (with an on-board medic).
The N-LifePods (Non-Emergency) provide care for service personnel who have significant but non-life-threatening disease or non-battle injuries.
There will be multiple variants of the N-LifePods, including:
- Medical (Regimental Aid Posts [RAP], Consulting room, Isolation for infectious agents, Ward capacity).
- Allied Health and Rehabilitation (Physiotherapy, Rehabilitation, Occupational therapy).
- Mental Health (for Psychological therapy).
- Dental Health.
The multiple variants of Defence S-LifePods contain essential support capabilities that enable effective function of the Defence E-LifePods and Defence S-LifePods.
Like the Defence E-LifePods and Defence N-LifePods, the Defence S-LifePods can integrate with the host nation military logistics.