Acusurgicals: Portable Biosafety Surgical Chamber

To provide a point of care surgical system for interventional management of surgical cases.

In our region, getting healthcare services requires a lot of mobility from underdeveloped areas to developed cities like Karachi, where the infrastructure and resources are insufficient to cater the traffic of patients coming for minor procedures like debridement and wound closure. The time taken to travel to city increases risk and provides a vegetative environment for bacterial growth. This increases the chances of not only acquiring the infection at the site of wound but also complicates and delays wound recovery.Globally, SSI rates have been found to be from 2.5% to as high as 41.9%. We therefore, aim to provide a mobile infrastructure system in the form of Portable Biosafety Surgical Theater, so that the cost and time of traveling can be minimized.The recent flood in Pakistan affected almost 33 million people and killed at least 1,739 as of Nov & 20.6 million people required humanitarian assistance. This increased the burden on the tertiary care hospitals of the cities as the traffic of the patient outburst than usual.

In order to provide a mobile infrastructure for minor surgical procedures, we have devised a Portable Biosafety Surgical Theatre that can be carried to even remote areas. It comprises of a closed chamber. In this chamber we have fixed HEPA filters that work through negative pressure to create a secured environment for patient and healthcare provider. The HEPA filter in this chamber is capable of filtering particles of up to 0.3 µm in size and creates negative pressure inside the chamber by drawing clean and filtered air in and out of the chamber. UV lights are installed inside the chamber for sterilization and keeping the chamber safe from the growth of microorganisms. Chamber contains a window at the front for instruments handling.

Additionally, the portable surgical theatre is supported by a stainless steel trolley featuring four easily moveable wheels, making the chamber progression simpler to the desired location without the need of extensive human labor making it less labor intensive requiring lesser expenditure on labor.

This device is aimed to be utilized by healthcare professionals without the need to traveling for long hours, those present in the cities can access this device to avoid the workload of the busy hospitals, this chamber also reliefs the army personnel in war zones by instant aid. The countries all around the world requires such assistance, so it can be exported internationally. Thus, the target marketing of this product reaches national and international market as well.

People from less privileged areas can access healthcare services locally, which lowers travelling costs and save the time of patients in need of first assistance. Instead of remaining in big cities for the purpose of employment, healthcare professionals can return to their hometowns to help the community. This contributes to the rise in independent and self-employed healthcare workers.

We are a group of three students doing bachelors in Surgical Technology from Dow University of Health Sciences. The majority of people we interact with are medical personnel, many of whom have relocated from their hometown for better employment opportunities in developed cities.

Apart from this, we are assigned to clinical rotations at hospitals during our period of degree completion, where we see surgical patients suffering from surgical site infections due to lack of sterility, also the patients coming from underprivileged areas for their treatment because of lesser facilities in their hometown increasing the workload of hospitals in big cities. Having worked in hospitals for years, we could empathize with them and began to look for ways to solve this problem.

The steps taken to understand the needs of the population are the following:
Initially the field survey is done to realize that we have so much load on the tertiary care hospitals.
Due to shortage of health service delivery in villages and remote areas, so therefore we devised a portable system for surgical needs.
Also a lot of trainees coming for training in tertiary care hospitals do not prefer to go back due to lack of health systems in villages so they prefer employment in cities. This resulted in aggregation of healthcare professionals in developed areas only. This situation also led to lack of employment despite human resource accessibility. Portable biosafety Surgical Chamber can be utilized anywhere and so it bypasses the need for proper health service infrastructure. So, surgical professionals can pursue their careers in a less privileged area.

The current situation of healthcare in our region is not up to standards leaving behind many patients suffering from post-operative infections This devised chamber is innovative in a certain way that it will provide standard health care to the less- privileged people in their own home town saving their time and money to travel to cities, moreover it will promote the factor of self employment causing a drastic change in the market by helping the health care workers who have moved from their home towns to cities for work, they can buy this chamber and go back to their origin to serve people  with standard health care facilities.

In the future years, we are looking forward to introduce a micro-robotics system  for the basic functional units like electrocautery and suction tube utilizing the servo-motor power driven mechanism allowing for precised control of angular or linear position, velocity and acceleration. This will ease the performer's task and ensure the efficacy of the device.

This device consists of a new application of existing technology, it mainly relies on the hardware technology at this stage but in future we are aimed for adding a micro-robotics system which will work via a software and a touch panel comprising of the functional buttons. It mainly revolves around the mechanical & electrical aspects.

As we haven't yet launched our solution, we look forward to manufacture 100 units initially in the first lot which will ultimately serve thousands of people nationwide.

We are currently bound due to financial circumstances as we are students of final year and devised this product with zero capital.

We are currently in accordance with a biomedical engineer Mr.Hafiz from Al-Subuk Enterprises for the technical support in the development of our solution.