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Building Mobile Vehicles to Expand Access to Hospital Care in Rural America

For patients in rural areas, accessing essential hospital care can be challenging, often requiring hours of travel just to get to the nearest hospital. But what if the hospital could come to them? 

Through our DEMOCRATIZE (Driving Equitable Medical Care in Rural America Through Innovative VehiclZE) project, we are leveraging our expertise in home hospital, mobile technology, and human-centered design to support development of a specialized electric vehicle capable of delivering advanced hospital-level care to patients, no matter where they live in rural America.

Our project will develop and implement two clinical use cases:

Rural Home Hospital Acute Mobile Hub 

This van will allow home hospital programs to strategically extend their catchment area and allow more patients, especially those in rural areas, to receive acute hospital care at home. Medical staff will use the van as their supply depot, diagnostic testing center, and central pharmacy. While most of the care will be delivered in patients’ homes, patients will be able to visit the van to receive imaging, rather than traveling to the hospital. 

Rural Mobile Oncology Hub

Patients will be able to receive chemotherapy, laboratory tests, and advanced imaging to stage and monitor their cancer. The hub will be staffed by medical professionals who are upskilled in medication preparation, infusion, and imaging. Oncologists, radiation technologists, and pharmacists will be available remotely. Patients will receive their care on the van, which will park at their home or another agreed upon location. In its initial rollout, the van will provide services for patients with lung, breast, colorectal, and pancreatic solid tumor cancers.

These use cases will be deployed in North Carolina.  

This work is part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health’s (ARPA-H) Platform Accelerating Rural Access to Distributed & InteGrated Medical care (PARADIGM) program. The program brings together 12 specialized teams to develop a multi-functional electric vehicle equipped with advanced medical devices.