Royal Philips is rolling out new industrial shipping containers adapted as COVID “cabins” for safer CT and x-ray imaging during the pandemic, the company announced recently.
The Amsterdam-based imaging giant is specifically testing the novel solution in its Philippines market, and said these boxes can be deployed within a hospital, outside in parking lots or elsewhere in the community. They’re meant to help minimize patient contact and are equipped with shields to reduce stray radiation, ultraviolet lamps to sterilize the workspace and a lab-grade computer cubicle.
“With laboratory-based COVID-19 tests typically taking up to 48 hours to complete, healthcare authorities in the Philippines are about to start using Philips’ new CT and x-ray cabins to triage patients so they can be immediately isolated if their scan suggests they have COVID-19,” officials noted in a news item posted to the firm’s website on Friday. “In addition to supporting the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept could also offer benefits in other situations—for example, in emergency rescue and disaster relief zones.”
Philips noted that the coronavirus containers work with several of its CT and x-ray offerings and can also be linked to hospital IT infrastructure for radiologists to read images remotely.
They’re currently only available in the Philippines with no immediate plans for wider distribution in other markets, a company spokesman told Radiology Business.
The announcement is the latest in a string of outside-the-box ideas imaging providers are testing to continue business during the pandemic. Radiology experts in Singapore recently highlighted a low-cost reusable acrylic and silicone rubber barrier shield they’ve developed to deliver MR imaging, according to a study in Clinical Radiology. And imaging providers at Penn State Health previously opened a Radiology Annex in a storage unit to image patients suspected of having the virus, without triggering stringent cleaning protocols.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.