The MONARCH System for a Mobile & Modular Hospital

In the event of a calamity or a natural disaster like the recent <a href="http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/03/01/how-building-codes-saved-lives-during-chiles-earthquake/" target="_blank">earthquakes</a>, a mobile hospital would be a very good thing to set up on location. How about a design like this, which is both mobile and modular, and *we think* also <a href="../solar-power" target="_blank">solar powered</a>. The MONARCH Systems Mobile Hospital is designed by Baltimore-based firm <a href="http://www.hcm2.com/" target="_blank">Hord Coplan Macht</a> in partnership with <a href="http://www.spevco.com/" target="_blank">SPEVCO</a>, a custom fabricator of specialty vehicles and trailers. Specialty semi-trailers outfitted with the latest in medical equipment and hospital services could be driven to location and assembled into a fully operational <a href="http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/03/26/3hlds-marvelous-bandaged-medical-center/" target="_blank">hospital</a> in less than 2 weeks.

The MONARCH System is a way to bring advanced medical care to where it is needed, letting both the facilities and expertise come to the patients rather than making them travel.

Each trailer can be outfitted to a specific need, such as beds, clinic, surgery, etc.

The system is modular by design in order to provide the medical care needed at a given location. Fully scalable, the system can be a simple clinic up to a fully operational hospital.

The design for the full hospital requires 58 trailers to create a 48-bed hospital, complete with waiting rooms, gift shops, surgical suites, O.R.s, labs, pharmacies and more.

Here an outdoor eating area provides food for doctors, patients and visitors.

The entire complex for the full hospital could be fully disassembled, moved to a new location and put together in less than 2 weeks.

The hospital could even include state of the art facilities MRI, Mammography, CT Scan and X-Ray scanning, as well as an emergency suite for trauma care.

A facility such as this placed remotely would also need to provide for itself in terms of water and power. Ideally, the trailers come equipped with solar panels on their roof to provide renewable energy.

These modular and mobile hospitals could also be used as teaching institutions to educate a local population on medical care.

MONARCH™, which stands for MObileNOmadicARCHitecture could potentially serve as the go to type of facility in the case of calamity and natural disaster, being able to open its doors quickly with less investment than more traditional construction.

The modular trailers would be assembled together and organized according to the type of care or service they provide.

Hord Coplan Macht, a Baltimore-based firm, and SPEVCO, a custom fabricator of specialty vehicles and trailers, are working jointly on this design.

They will present this design to the Arab Health 2010 Congress in Dubai.