Now, if only the IDP Group’s Hamed Asl could get somebody within those Ontario sectors to return his calls — especially the long-term care industry.
“What we’re going to focus on first are the ones for the long-term care facilities,” the businessman said, noting that nursing home residents are at highest risk from the virus and its spread. “We’ve already completed the specs for the different types, and we can build any of them,” he says, estimating an expanded IDP workforce could potentially produce 10 of the units — made by retrofitting 20-foot-long shipping containers — each day.
The first shipping container destined for a medical makeover arrived at the sprawling 171 Main Street North facility today.
“We’ve been working on the design and specs for the past little while,” says Asl.
The “biocontainment pod” has been developed in collaboration with an effort known as CURA — “an international task force of designers, engineers, medical professionals, and military experts,” Asl says. The open source ‘Connected Unit for Respiratory Ailments’ (CURA) initiative is backed by the World Economic Forum and by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he adds.
Intended for quick deployment domestically and internationally when hospitals run short of space during emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, each pod functions as a modern, intensive-care isolation room with two beds.
