Carrying cases: the portable intensive care unit fits life support under a stretcher.

WHEN soldiers are wounded, survival often depends on getting to a surgeon's table as quickly as possible. But that can mean moving them up to 10 times during the first 24 hours.

Each time, ventilators, monitors and drug infusers must be plugged and unplugged. This equipment, while vital, also slows things down and wastes precious time. There's also the risk that the patient's condition will deteriorate while the machines are off.

Yet it wasn't medics or battlefield physicians who developed a solution. An electrical engineer, a rocket scientist and a software developer are among the five former Northrop Grumman Corp. employees who created a portable intensive care unit that does everything a trauma unit does, but on a seven-foot long, five-inch thick stretcher.

Their company, Signal Hill-based Integrated Medical Systems Inc., was spun off from Northrop six years ago and now sells to the U.S. military. There also are plans to sell a new, cheaper version of the $170,000 device to the commercial market.

"In trauma we talk about the golden hour, the first hour after injury," said Dr. Patrizio Petrone, international research fellowship chief for trauma and critical care at the USC Keck School of Medicine. "Usually the patient is very unstable, the blood pressure is low and you need to perform surgery right away. In that first hour you need to hurry up and detect everything you can."

Petrone helped coordinate a clinical study of the device, called life support for trauma and transport, or LSTAT, which he said enabled his medical staff to prepare a trauma patient for a move more quickly than usual. "The time to get the patient ready to go from the emergency department to the operating room or the ICU was seven times shorter than conventional (methods)," he said.

The device was first used by U.S. military units in Kosovo, the province of Serbia and Montenegro that was once part of Yugoslavia. There are now 50 deployed, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, and onboard Air Force One and Air Force Two. Finland, Saudi Arabia, and Spain have also bought the units for military use.

The product came about after the first Iraq war, Operation Desert Storm, when the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency was looking for someone to build a "trauma pod" to keep severely injured soldiers alive.

At a time when aerospace and defense spending had fallen off, Northrop created a biomedical team as part of an effort to develop new areas of business. The team won a contract to create a working model of the LSTAT.

"We won because DARPA ... didn't want a medical device company that just focused on one disease or one box," said Matthew Hanson, Integrated Medical's vice president for business development. "They wanted a systems integrator that could take a bunch of equipment from different suppliers and make them work as a single system."

After its spinoff in 1999, Integrated Medical moved out of Northrop's facilities and now has 25 employees at its 12,000-square-foot facility in Signal Hill. (Northrop retains a small stake.) The business has been profitable since inception.

Integrated Medical built the LSTAT to hold an array of devices, including ventilator and defibrillator (made by other parties). It can plug into any power source from an ambulance, aircraft or regular wall outlet. When a patient has to be moved, battery power kicks in.

Designers had to integrate all the pieces onto a common power bus so only one plug would be needed. They then had to isolate each circuit, not just from the others but from outside interference. Each device's data was merged into a single stream, simplifying the output.

The system comes with a handheld device that allows doctors to keep track of information even when away from the patient. Ethernet ports allow for the transfer of patient data to any computer network.

Petrone found that this allows medical personnel to cover more ground. He was also impressed with a blood analysis device because it cuts out a step for his medical staff. "With only one drop of blood you can get lab results in 90 seconds right there," he said. "Usually, when you draw blood and send it to a lab, it's 25 minutes."

The next generation of the LSTAT, which should be available within two to four years, will weigh about 90 pounds, half the current weight. The company expects to produce the new product more efficiently--perhaps through additional partnerships with companies supplying the components--and increase its production volume, thus dropping the price to around $100,000.

This will allow Integrated Medical to tackle commercial markets, hospitals, airliners, cruise ships and stadiums. The LSTAT already has been used in trials at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

"Where we will be competing for space in a hospital room is with the existing individual pieces of equipment," Hanson said. "Our market challenge is to show the suppliers of those individual pieces that it's actually to their benefit to be integrated with our platform."

Integrated Medical Systems

Year Founded: 1999

Core Business: Portable intensive care unit

Revenues 2003 *: $4.7 million

Revenues 2004 *: $5.7 million

Employees in 2004: 22

Employees in 2005: 25

Goal: Increase product family, the variations, the ability to customize and commercialization

Driving Force: Saving lives and improving the quality of life

* Fiscal years ended in July.