Pikemobile

Within a decade or two, experts predict that the U.S. Medicaid system will be overwhelmed by approximately forty million ‘senior citizens’ living on into their nineties and one hundreds as frail, demented, incontinent semi-vegetables who are unable to care for themselves and who require skilled nursing care ‘24-7.’ Even if we could afford the 2 trillion dollar annual cost to care for these decrepit folks, there simply aren’t enough skilled nursing beds in the entire country to handle them. Until mass scale euthanasia becomes more widely known and accepted, this challenge must be addressed by new technology. Enter the Pikemobile, a self propelled fully automated bathing, feeding and medical monitoring apparatus which provides today’s vegetative senior citizens with everything they need to lead a healthy, active and comfortable existence. The Pikemobile (inspired by Starship Captain Christopher Pike, who was left in a semi-vegetative state by a horrible radiation accident involving a warp core baffle plate) comprises: (a) an outer pod enclosing a tiltable, rotatable bedding chamber containing the patient, the bedding chamber having a soft, watertight neck collar isolating the patient’s lower body portion from his/her head together with a comfortable head and neck support, the bedding chamber coupled to the pod through a planetary drive assembly for periodically rotating the patient to avoid decubitus (bed sores), the bedding chamber lined with a soft, porous, fibrous material providing comfort for the patient and enabling the patient’s lower body portion to be bathed and cleaned periodically by flooding and flushing of the bedding material with warm water and soap supplied by a reservoir means and circulated into a waste disposal tank; (b) reservoir means supplying potable water, bathing water, nutrients, medications, soap, disinfectants and other consumable materials necessary for patient care; (c) plumbing means for periodically refilling the reservoir from building utilities and emptying the waste disposal tank; (d) warm air drying means and air conditioning means for the patient and bedding material; (e) automated hydration and feeding means enabling the patient to be continuously fed and hydrated for an indefinite period via the reservoir means; (f) patient monitoring means enabling continuous monitoring of body weight, hydration, temperature and blood pressure, and computer control means for bathing, waste disposal, patient rotation and adjusting the flow of nutrients and hydration to maintain patient homeostasis; (g) wheeled carriage means for moving the pod structure along a horizontal surface

One advantage of this invention is that patient care is entirely automated and requires little or no human involvement other than filling the food and water reservoirs occasionally, somewhat akin to a hummingbird feeder. Rather than being sent away to a skilled nursing home, the modern vegetative patient can simply be hooked up at home or taken to any neighborhood Pikemobile center where they can be left unattended almost indefinitely. Since one of the primary goals for this invention is fully automatic patient care, the preferred embodiment for the hydration and feeding means of claim 1(e) is via a rectal tube, a method first tried by Arab physician Ibn Zuhr in the 12th century and later perfected during the treatment of President Garfield following his unfortunate assassination in 1881.This method enables feeding and hydration for an indefinite period and overcomes all the limitations of standard nasogastric or PEG tube feeding which involve considerable discomfort to the patient and which have both a time limitation and require involvement of surgeons and other skilled personnel.

For patients who have some awareness of their surroundings and are not yet in a fully vegetative state, a preferred embodiment for this invention would include pod locomotion controls operable by the patient. Another preferred embodiment for this invention would be the inclusion of onboard electronics and a virtual reality helmet or 360 display providing visual and auditory stimuli for the patient. At the mere touch of a button, cheerful family gatherings, cruises to the Bahamas, pleasant RV trips through Tennessee can all be a part of the Pikemobile experience. The possibilities are endless.