AirShield: Virtual 'Air Curtain' to protect against COVID-19 transmission from patients to healthworkers in hospital ICUs

当前的冠状病毒大流行凸显了医院住院呼吸道感染患者如何将疾病传播给员工和其他患者。医务人员占意大利冠状病毒病例的10%，早期迹象表明，英国医务人员也将受到不成比例的影响。感染性疾病（如麻疹、SARS、肺结核）的患者通常被隔离在负压室中，但在流行病和资源匮乏的环境中，这是不可能的。从2003年的SARS疫情中吸取教训，一些国家将所有重症监护病床都放在负压室中，但在英国，几乎所有的重症监护病床仍然在开放式病房中。AirShield解决了这个问题，允许重症监护（或医院病房）中的患者虚拟隔离，同时保持从病床的各个方面轻松接近患者。这是通过调整层流技术管理广泛使用的实验室，以保持无菌工作区的临床环境和改造医院病床。空气将被过滤掉任何呼出的液滴/气溶胶，因此患者周围有一堵清洁的空气墙。感染传播给工作人员和其他病人（以及随后的疾病和潜在死亡）的风险大大降低。该系统易于实施，具有成本效益，易于扩展，能够在现有医院设施不堪重负的情况下扩大隔离病床，并在全球范围内广泛应用于其他传染病，特别是在低资源环境中。影响信息的额外扩展范围将扩大，以探索AirShield产品的市场多样化，而不仅仅是直接的COVID-19 ICU-在大流行后的更广泛环境中，将与传染性疾病传播相关的风险降低到屏蔽传染性颗粒物，以确保可行的长期业务模式。系统设计的适应性和实用性将允许在更广泛的临床环境中使用，例如门诊咨询期间的近患者使用，并进一步扩展到发展中国家的低资源环境。

The current coronavirus pandemic has highlighted how hospital in-patients with respiratory infections can spread disease to staff and other patients. Medical staff comprise 10% of coronavirus cases in Italy and early signs indicate that UK medical staff will also be disproportionately affected. Patients with contagious infections (e.g. Measles, SARS, TB) are normally isolated in negative pressure rooms, but in epidemic and low resource settings, this is impossible. Learning from the SARS epidemic of 2003, some countries have put all intensive care beds in negative pressure rooms, but in the UK almost all of these beds are still on open wards.AirShield solves this problem, allowing virtual isolation of the patient in intensive care (or hospital ward), whilst maintaining easy access to the patient from all sides of the bed. This is managed by adapting laminar airflow technology widely used in laboratories to maintain sterile work areas to the clinical environment and retrofitting to hospital beds. The air will be filtered of any exhaled droplets/aerosols so a wall of clean air surrounds the patient. Risks of infection spread to staff and other patients (and subsequent sickness and potential deaths), are significantly reduced. The system is simple to implement, cost-effective and easily scaled, enabling expansion of isolation beds as existing hospital facilities are overwhelmed, and has wider application for other infectious diseases globally, especially in low resource environments.ADDITIONAL EXTENSION FOR IMPACT INFORMATIONThe scope will be widened to explore market diversification of the AirShield offering beyond immediate COVID-19 ICU-related infectious disease transmission to shielding from infectious particulates in wider post-pandemic settings to ensure a viable long-term business model. Adaptation and miniaturisation of the system design will allow use in wider clinical settings e.g. near-patient use during outpatient consultations and further expansion to low-resource settings in the developing world.