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Dyson, the U.K. company known for its vacuums and air purifiers have designed a built a new ventilator in 10 days in collaboration with The Technology Partnership (TTP), reports Fast Company. The new machine has been dubbed "CoVent." It is a portable bed-mounted ventilator that can... View full entry
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has announced the creation of a special task force that aims to educate public officials, healthcare facilities, and other architects on how to adapt existing buildings for temporary hospital use. According to a statement published by the group this... View full entry
A temporary field hospital for use by people unable to isolate and recover from COVID-19 in their own homes will be located at a soccer field in Shoreline, a city spokesman said.
The Shoreline Temporary Field Hospital, at 19030 First Ave N.E., will provide up to 200 beds, according to the city’s website. It will house “people exposed to, at risk of exposure, or becoming ill with the novel coronavirus..."
— The Seattle Times
According to The Seattle Times, the hospital will be on a turf soccer field that is on a school district property that is leased to the city. King County is creating temporary field hospitals at a number of locations for people who cannot remain in their homes or do not have a... View full entry
Light, air, and hygiene [...] were the best treatment for tuberculosis at the time.
The design and construction of specialized sanatoria coincided with the advent of Modernism. Architectural elements like flat roofs, terraces and balconies, and white- or light-painted rooms spread across Europe. Not unlike the sanatorium, the new architecture was intended to cure the perceived physical, nervous, and moral ailments brought on by crowded cities.
— CityLab
The collective desire to cure and prevent the seemingly unstoppable tuberculosis epidemic through deliberate design choices had given tremendous momentum to a revolutionary movement in our fairly recent architectural past: Modernism. Staircase inside Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium. Photo courtesy... View full entry
A 3D-printer company in Italy has designed and printed 100 life-saving respirator valves in 24 hours for a hospital that had run out of them...The valve connects patients in intensive care to breathing machines.
The hospital, in Brescia, had 250 coronavirus patients in intensive care and the valves are designed to be used for a maximum of eight hours at a time...The 3D-printed version cost less than €1 (90p) each to produce and the prototype took three hours to design.
— BBC
Cristian Fracassi, a chief executive at Isinnova, an independent research institute in Italy, and mechanical engineer Alessandro Romaioli teamed up to aid the hospitals need for new valves. Partnering with Lonati, another local 3D-printing company, the group began printing to meet the hospital's... View full entry
The first patients arrived Monday at a specialized hospital built in just 10 days as part of China’s intensive efforts to fight a new virus.
Huoshenshan Hospital and a second facility with 1,500 beds that’s due to open this week were built by construction crews who are working around the clock in Wuhan, the city in central China where the outbreak was first detected in December. Most of the city’s 11 million people are barred from leaving the area.
— Los Angeles Times
The hospital was built by a 7,000-member crew of carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other specialists, the Los Angeles Times reports. The final result is a two-story, 600,000-square-foot facility, containing isolations wards and 30 intensive care units. According to the Los Angeles Times... View full entry
By early next year [UnitedHealth Group] expects to house 350 homeless Medicaid patients whose annual health-care spending, while they’re on the streets, exceeds $17 million. The goal is for them to “graduate” within a year to paying their own rent. — Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek profiles UnitedHealth Group's efforts to reign in healthcare costs by providing high-cost patients with housing. The approach comes as the connections between a lack of housing and extreme healthcare costs come into sharper relief between these adjacent industries. The... View full entry
Legally and morally, hospitals cannot discharge patients if they have no safe place to go. So patients who are homeless, frail or live alone, or have unstable housing, can occupy hospital beds for weeks or months – long after their acute medical problem is resolved. — USA Today
Hospitals with housing-insecure patients are getting creative in an attempt to both provide more holistic care for their patients while also reducing overall patient and hospital costs. It can cost upwards of $2,700 to spend a night in a hospital, according to a USA Today report, an amount that... View full entry
