Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen backed a $5 million medical evacuation project after Ebola; in 2020, its technology helped bring 14 Americans with coronavirus home from a cruise ship in Japan
A medical evacuation technology backed by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen after the 2014 Ebola outbreak went on to play a crucial role during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, helping safely transport infected Americans from a quarantined cruise ship in Japan. Following the Ebola crisis in West Africa, Allen provided $5 million in funding to support the development of advanced biocontainment capabilities that could safely move patients infected with highly contagious diseases. The project led to the creation of specialised isolation systems designed to protect both patients and medical personnel during transport.
From Ebola to coronavirus
The technology called Containerized Biocontainment System (CBCS) was developed by Kansas City-based biocontainment and global health engineering firm MRIGlobal with the help of a public-private partnership with the US Department of State and the Paul G. Allen Foundation, created in direct response to the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak. At that time the world was witnessing a pressing need for a way to safely transport the infected patients over long distances without risking the lives of the flight crew, medical staff or the general public.After many years that same system was being used at the centre of the first major medical evacuations of the COVID-19 pandemic. On February 17, 2020, around 14 US citizens who tested positive for Coronavirus were evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which had been under quarantine off Japan’s coast for more than 10 days. Instead of remaining stranded from home, the patients were transported in specialised containment units on a chartered evacuation aircraft, which isolated them using standard biosafety protocols en route to coronavirus treatment centers in the US.
How the system works
MRIGlobal engineered the CBCS as a reusable, flight-ready biocontainment and medical treatment unit designed to roll on and off government or civilian cargo aircraft. The units are built to containerize highly contagious pathogens, are described as extremely durable, and are specifically designed to allow the safe transport of critically ill patients while maintaining both biocontainment integrity and safe flight conditions. Dean Gray, director at MRIGlobal, said the organization was proud to play a role in helping safely evacuate people out of harm’s way to locations where they could receive appropriate medical care. He added that there’s nothing quite like the CBCS for flyable medical transport, noting that it was developed specifically to respond to critical global health emergencies like the coronavirus outbreak, with the ultimate goal of saving lives.As of the February 2020 evacuation, MRIGlobal had designed and delivered four CBCS units, all in active use by the US government. The system’s significance was recognized well before the pandemic, too — it received an R&D 100 Award for Innovation from R&D Magazine in 2016, an honor given annually to 100 of the most technologically significant innovations introduced to the marketplace that year.
Legacy Beyond Technology
While Allen is best known for co-founding Microsoft alongside Bill Gates, his contributions extended into scientific research, public health and disaster response. The successful deployment of the biocontainment transport system during the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated how investments made years earlier in response to Ebola helped address an entirely different global health emergency.
