by David G. Imber, special to DOTmed News
When Ian M. Smith was a boy in Rockhampton, Australia he followed his father, an itinerant minister, to sermons across the vast outback. Afterward congregants inevitably asked one thing of the clergyman: On his next trip, could he bring medical supplies from the big city? He was there to comfort souls, but it was their bodies, they told him, that needed mending. The boy wondered why doctors themselves couldn't bring clinics directly to the outback.

Ian emigrated to the United States, and immediately joined the service of his new nation in World War II. On the battlefield the question seemed even more pressing. Where the terrain was most remote, medical facilities were most lacking, and yet often that was where the most critical care was called for. He told a buddy about his dream of clinics on wheels. Years later that man became an envoy to pre-revolutionary Cuba, and when the president of that country told him that he needed to provide medical services to the islands remotest dwellers, he remembered the dream of his fellow soldier. In 1949 Smith realized his first 36 mobile multi-phasic health clinics, built upon standard bus coach bodies from a local Oneonta, New York manufacturer. Medical Coaches as incorporated in 1952.

Today Medical Coaches partners with Siemens Medical Systems, GE and others to offer a wide array of functionality, from mobile MRI, PET/CT, X-Ray, to lithotripsy, broadcast, education, IT, disaster units, traveling labs and dormitories. They have units in all 50 states, and more than 110 countries around the world. Medical Coaches has come to the aid of the CARE, UNICEF, even NASA, and they were at Ground Zero in September 2001. In 1995 they became the first mobile MRI and PET manufacturer to receive ISO-9001 quality certification. Every single unit, no matter its function, is built with the recognition that the equipment it will move over unknown and uncertain terrain. Each represents an enormous capital investment.

In today's cost-conscious environment, Medical Coaches serves more than those in hostile, rural localities. Even in cities, rather than build a single brick and mortar facility, it's often more cost-effective to build something that can serve far-flung communities around a local region. Smith cites Cleveland Clinic as an example, which shares a mobile PET/CT among some 20-30 outlying clinical offices. Medical Coaches has local service arrangements in every locality where they sell.

Next year Medical Coaches will be working with Siemens to put their new molecular imaging CT scanner in a mobile unit, and they expect to produce a greatly increased number of mobile mammography units in the near term. At RSNA the company showed a massive surgery ward and recovery trailer designed for the Venezuelan army. Fortunately, it's a nation at peace. But Medical Coaches' extraordinary reputation for quality and reliability instills confidence that when they're needed, these mobile units will fulfill Ian M. Smith's original dream of top medical care everywhere.

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