Description
The Aquati-Cot is an aquatic adaptable cot to help medics rescue those in extreme geographical conditions, such as navigating after a flash flood, hurricane, or even to cross a body of water. Studies show that in a crisis scenario, between the mildly, moderately, and severely injured, the longest pre-hospital wait time belongs to the severely injured. These individuals are sometimes difficult to find, due to the extreme geography that they sometimes find themselves in, or too injured to move towards help themselves. This same extreme terrain also makes them difficult to extract. The Aquati-Cot provides a medic a tool to navigate these treacherous and extreme areas often found in a crisis event to transport patients to medical attention.
Analysis
This device attempts to put a start to the answer of how to rescue those severely injured patients who are in a precarious geographical conditions. The first criticism that I have of this device is how one note it is. Water is not the only extreme condition that one could run into in a crisis scenario (Stretching empty desert, mud, Jungles, mountains, and rubbled terrain just to name a few). In any other situation besides dealing with stretches of water, the device may be useless. The floatation devices located on the sides of the cot are hollow, so even when carrying on land, I don’t see this added weight as too much of a departure from the weight of an ordinary cot. However, it also fails to address the weight problem of the original cot design when loaded with a patient and carried on land. This device may struggle in a scenario with river rapids, especially considering the stress the patient would experience from the rough nature of a river rapid.
