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Already in use in war-struck Ukraine, the systems were designed by SurgiBox, a start-up that has worked with MIT’s collaborative design-focused D-Lab for more than a decade.
Designed to enable safe surgery in places without sterile operating rooms, about 50 of the systems were delivered to Kyiv in March as part of a humanitarian mission. They also hold promise for applications outside of warzones, however, as most of the world’s population lacks ready access to operating rooms. Severe weather and other natural disasters can also disrupt operations.
The SurgiBox system includes a ‘bubble’ with armholes facing inward, a module that filters and controls air flow, and a battery. The entire thing can fit inside a backpack, and can reportedly be set up in minutes.
“We’re trying to get safe surgery to patients that need it,” said SurgiBox founder Debbie Teodorescu today (22 May). “In this day and age, outside of a very small chunk of the world, it’s very difficult to get surgery safely. You can have the same doctors, the same outstanding skills, but if you’re lacking in the facilities and the equipment, you just can’t offer the same care.”
Teodorescu is an affiliated researcher at D-Lab, where she first became involved during a research project in 2009. “I thought, ‘We’re able to protect our experiments wherever we need using glove boxes, so why can’t we do the same thing for patients?’ That’s how SurgiBox came about – a surgical glovebox.
“Now, it’s not really a box, and we don’t include gloves, but the same concept holds – you can provide patient protection at the point of need.”
The system is designed to be compact and lightweight, while also mimicking the environment of an operating room.
“Surgeons don’t want to change their workflow,” Teodorescu said. “It’s already a huge cognitive burden to do surgery. They don’t want to deal with things that increase that cognitive burden. We’re preserving their workflow.”
SurgiBox is now ramping up production ahead of its second medical device certification from the European Union, and an official launch across the bloc this summer. The start-up’s first full production batch will go to Doctors Without Borders.
In the long run, the team believes the system could be used to conduct surgery at patient bedsides, if they are elderly or especially vulnerable to infection. It could also be used for mobile surgeries by doctors who attend patients in ambulances.
More broadly, they see the device as an inexpensive alternative to operating rooms for many procedures.
“We think SurgiBox could be used to lower health care costs and also give doctors and patients more flexibility,” said CEO and co-founder Mike Teodorescu. “There’s a whole set of costs associated with cleaning the operating room, getting it ready for patients, and getting the patient prepped for the operating room. Having some of that at a patient’s bedside would be hugely beneficial.”
The CEO travelled with the systems on the latest delivery to Kyiv. After a previous donation, the Ukraine Operation Command South sent a letter thanking the company for saving 31 lives. The team realised that because of damage to health care infrastructure around the country, Ukraine’s civilian doctors were also using the system for situations such as childbirth, and to treat issues including gallbladder infections and appendicitis.
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