K.Sudhakar, Karnataka’s medical education minister recently unveiled Artificial Intelligence (AI) based healthcare pods to aid efforts in containment of contagious diseases like COVID- 19. The pods, which can accommodate upto nine beds, uses negative air pressure to help contain airborne diseases such as TB, Flu, and COVID-19. The government said that the pods have the potential to mitigate the inadequate healthcare infrastructure that has dented efforts to treat COVID- 19 patients who require hospitalization.

“The set-up of these pods requires minimum 500 square feet and these pods can be annexed to the existing hospital building, parking lot, or other open spaces in the hospital premises,” according to statement from the minister’s office. Karnataka is one of the worst affected regions in the country with over 2.5 lakh cases and over 4200 fatalities so far. It has also confirmed 7385 new cases yesterday that take the active cases to 82,149. Bengaluru confirmed 2912 cases that take the total to just under one lakh positives so far. The situation in other parts of the state continues to deteriorate as 20 out of the total 30 districts in Karnataka reported over 100 cases.

The set-up of these pods requires minimum 500 square feet and these pods can be annexed to the existing hospital building, parking lot, or other open spaces in the hospital premises

Sudhakar also encourages startups to focus on developing low-cost solutions to make healthcare more accessible and affordable. The pods were launched by Vevra, an architecture firm along with the Portugal IoT firm InnoWave Group to help treat and to prevent the spread of contagious diseases. “This project consists of a set of movable capsules that aims to efficiently assist in the infrastructure of local/private/government hospitals across India,” the minister’s office said in its statement. The pods come with a provision for oxygen supply, analyse and are integrated with a device to monitor oxygen supply pressure and to measure the oxygen concentration delivered by ventilators or breathing systems along with a failure alarm system.

India’s COVID-19 tally zoomed past 29 lakh, a day after it crossed 28 lakh, with a single-day spike of 68,898 infections, while the recoveries have increased to 21,58,946 today taking the recovery rate to over 74 percent, according to the Union Health Ministry data. The total cases of coronavirus infections mounted to 29,05,823, while the death toll climbed to 54,849 with 983 new fatalities being reported in a span of 24 hours, shows the data updated at 8am.