Self-sanitising smart beds for Covid patients soon, courtesy MNNIT
PRAYAGRAJ: If all goes as per plan, high-end sensor-embellished self-sanitising smart beds at an affordable cost would be made available for Covid-19 patients in the market.
A team of scientists from applied mechanics department of Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT)-Allahabad has already developed digital model with all specifications of this bed having an inbuilt automatic-sanitising mechanism and are in the process of developing a prototype.
Once ready, this bed would be able to self-sanitise within 10 minutes of a Covid-19 patient leaving it post treatment and thereby becoming ready for the next one.
The auto-sanitisation would save valuable time in making a bed available for a new coronavirus patient and also protect health workers from the threat of contracting the virus while manually sanitizing a bed used by a coronavirus patient in a hospital or any other setting, claimed MNNIT experts.
The team comprising Prof RP Tewari, Ashutosh Mishra, Ramesh
Pandey and Abhishek Tiwari believe that they can have this much-needed smart bed ready for use within the two months.
Prof RP Tewari, a senior member of the team, said that a project of this portable and economical bed was sent to Council of National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research (NITSER) and following its approval of funds, work on getting the bed ready will gain more speed.
“This bed is foldable and have retractable polymer sheet allowing for the bed to be covered from top and allow its mechanism to automatically sanitise it,” he explained, though reluctant to share all details as the design is yet to get patented.
The bed also has a gear and motor mechanism and allow use of ultraviolet rays also to sanitise it thereby making it doubly safe for reuse, he said. The team shared that as being done with other inventions by institute experts following Covid-19 outbreak, the plan is to get the design patented, prototype ready and then enter in to a MoU with a firm for its mass production at the earliest.
“The aim is to develop a prototype costing less than Rs 35,000 and make it available for hospitals at a cost anywhere between Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 per bed,” shared Ashutosh Mishra, one of its inventors.
He said that the plan is to have two separate chambers along with the bed containing different sanitizing and sterilizing agents so that the bed can be sterlised and used even for patients suffering from other infectious diseases like chicken pox and Tuberculosis etc.
“This would also make the bed more useful for hospitals etc,” he added.