CURA was designed and produced in four weeks as a result of the joined effort of an international task force. The group includes, among the others, designers at Carlo Ratti Associati with Italo Rota, engineers at Jacobs, and health technology company Philips for medical equipment supply. The first prototype in Turin has been developed with the financial sponsorship of the Pan European bank UniCredit. CURA is supported by the World Economic Forum (COVID-19 Action Platform and Cities, and Infrastructure and Urban Services Platform). The list of contributors feature Humanitas Research Hospital (Medical Engineering), Policlinico di Milano (Medical Consultancy), MIT Senseable City Lab (Research), Studio FM Milano (Visual Identity & Graphic Design), Squint/Opera (Digital Media), IEC Engineering (Fulvio Sabato – Safety and Certifications), Alex Neame of Team Rubicon UK (Logistics), Ivan Pavanello of Projema (MEP Engineering), Dr. Maurizio Lanfranco of Ospedale Cottolengo (Medical Consultancy), Gruppo Boero (Painting Products).

In the last weeks, hospitals in the countries most affected by COVID-19 have been struggling to increase their ICU capacity to admit a growing number of patients suffering from severe respiratory diseases, who are in need of ventilators. Regardless of how the pandemic situation would unfold, it is expected that more ICUs will be needed internationally in the next few months. CURA aims to improve the efficiency of the existing design solutions of field hospitals, producing a compact ICU pod that is quick-to-deploy and safe to work in for medical professionals.

Each unit is hosted in a 20-foot intermodal container, repurposed with biocontainment equipment. An extractor creates indoor negative pressure, complying with the standards of Airborne Infection Isolation Rooms AIIRs. Two glass windows carved on the opposite sides of the containers are meant for doctors to always get a sense of the status of patients both inside and outside the pods. Also, this would potentially allow external visitors to get closer to their relatives in a safer and more humane setting. Each pod works autonomously and can be promptly shipped to any location around the world, adapting to the needs of the local healthcare infrastructure.

The first CURA pod has been built and installed in the framework of the temporary hospital set up by top Italian health authorities in the former OGR industrial complex in the city of Turin (more info about the hospital below). CURA provides ICUs for the hospital, which has about 90 beds for patients affected by coronavirus. The pod contains all the medical equipment needed for two ICU patients, including ventilators and monitors as well as intravenous fluid stands and syringe drivers. The unit is connected to the rest of the hospital by an inflatable structure, which serves as storage and changing room. Potentially, the inflatable unit can be used to connect more than one pod to create multiple modular configurations, either in proximity to a hospital or as a self-standing field hospital.

CURA has been developed as an open-source project, with its tech specs, drawings and design materials made accessible for everyone online online (link). Such collective endeavor has also created an opportunity for testing new methods for international design collaboration. Since the project’s launch, in late March, more than two thousand people have shown an interest and contacted the CURA team to join the project, reproduce it, or provide technical advises. While the first prototype becomes operative in Italy, more units are currently under construction in other parts of the world, from UAE to Canada.

CREDITS
CURA-Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments: https://curapods.org/
The first unit of CURA, sponsored by UniCredit, is built and installed at the OGR temporary hospital in Turin, Italy

List of people and organizations who have contributed to CURA: CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati with Italo Rota (Design and Innovation), Humanitas Research Hospital (Medical Engineering), Policlinico di Milano (Medical Consultancy), Jacobs (Alberto Riva – Master Planning, Design, Construction and Logistics Support Services), MIT Senseable City Lab (Research), Studio FM Milano (Visual Identity & Graphic Design), Squint/Opera (Digital Media), IEC Engineering (Fulvio Sabato – Safety and Certifications), Alex Neame of Team Rubicon UK (Logistics), Ivan Pavanello of Projema (MEP Engineering), Dr. Maurizio Lanfranco of Ospedale Cottolengo (Medical Consultancy), Philips (Medical Equipment Supply), Gruppo Boero (Painting Products)

With the support of the World Economic Forum: COVID-19 Action Platform, and Cities, Infrastructure and Urban Services Platform

Photo credits: Max Tomasinelli