Dealing the seal: disease, terrorism concerns drive hospitals' interest in Mintie Technologies' portable containment units.

IN an age when a biological terrorist attack or large-scale pandemic could easily overwhelm a typical community hospital, a third-generation, family-owned Los Angeles company has seen an opportunity for new business.

Mintie Technologies Inc., a four-year-old spinoff of a ventilation system servicing company, has launched a line of environmental containment units designed to quickly convert hospital rooms and even full wards into isolation units.

The portable, foldable units--typically fitting in a carrier about the size of a large golf bag--are the evolution of apparatus that its parent company developed for its own health and safety reasons while cleaning commercial ventilation systems.

The first commercial units for ceiling and wall use have been marketed to office buildings and movie production sets as well as health care facilities, since 2003.

"This really has been our most successful product to date," said James Mintie, executive vice president of Mintie Technologies, the products branch of Mintie Corp., which continues to perform the ventilation system servicing for which his grandfather founded the company in 1940.

The units consist of heavy-duty PVC fabric covering an aluminum framework that can be zipped and Velcroed together to create temporary anterooms for everyday maintenance by building staff or use by healthcare workers needing to isolate a patient. A portable negative-air machine attached to the temporary room provides ventilation without exposing the rest of the building to contamination.

The product has helped drive an annual sales of increase of around 25 percent, with expectations of a minimum annual growth rate of 18 percent for the next five years.

But a solution for large-scale health emergencies--and even bigger sales--is the goal for Mintie's most ambitious product, the ECU2. These anterooms that can be zipped together for a wider space. A corridor flange accessory stretches like a sheet across a corridor entrance with the ECU2 serving as an airlock to the isolation unit.

The units range in price from $4,500 for a ceiling unit with air machine, to around $15,000 for an isolation ward bundle that includes two anterooms, a flange and two air machines.

Mintie products are in use in all 50 states with Texas the company's largest market, followed by California. Customers include Cedars Sinai Medical Center and USC University Hospital. Glendale Adventist Medical Center, which had been using the maintenance units, recently ordered five ECU2 bundles that should enable hospital workers to convert two longer-term care units and part of its second floor into isolation wards if ever necessary.

"We wanted something that would block off an entire corridor and be easy and quick to set up," said Rita Wilson, the hospital's infection control coordinator, noting that permanent construction was rejected as too expensive and difficult.

Disaster unpreparedness

Incentives for hospitals to improve their infection control capabilities, via updated federal guidelines and national hospital accreditation mandates, have come in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks and a succession of studies warning of the nation's vulnerability in the event of an influenza epidemic or outbreak of avian flu.

Dr. Edward Eitzen, an Arlington, Va.-based consultant and former senior medical advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, said he knew of no U.S. health care facility that could adequately cope on its own with a wide-scale public health emergency.

Eitzen said temporary units such as Mintie's are a potential option for a hospital needing to quickly care for critically ill patients. "Because of funding constraints, most of our health care system operates in a 'just in time' mode, where there are just enough beds and staff to keep a hospital operating at a high occupancy rate," he said. "The concept of surge capacity to deal with emergencies is largely a myth these days."

Because the Mintie units meet U.S. Centers for Disease Control guidelines for environmental infection control in health care facilities, the isolation ward packages are under consideration for inclusion in CDC's Strategic National Stockpile, according to the company. These are large caches of medicine and medical supplies to be assembled at certain locations around the country for deployment in an emergency, and scoring such a contract would mean multiple sales growth.

So far, all the airborne contaminant containment units sold were developed at the requests of healthcare customers, including a unit that allows doctors and nurses to perform surgery on tuberculosis patients without risking infecting other patients.

"You really need to spend time with your clients and listen to their experiences," said Mintie. "Our goal is to keep innovation alive--no idea is a bad idea."

Expansion into product manufacturing was a big shift for a traditionally service-based company. Founder Ernest Mintie's business offered on- and off-site air filter cleaning for aerospace companies such as Hughes Aircraft Co. and Lockeed Corp. in the lead-up to World War II.

When his son, Robert Mintie, joined the family business in the mid-1950s, the company expanded into a wider range of commercial air conditioning and ventilation maintenance. And when the grandsons, Kevin and James, came on board starting the late 1970s as the aerospace business was declining, the company shifted to the healthcare market, where a poorly functioning ventilation system not only can endanger lives but also affect a facility's accreditation status.

Mintie Technologies limits its production liabilities by outsourcing most of its production activities, which enables it operate with just eight employees, who can focus on product development and other essential functions. That compares to between 150 to 200 employees at the services company, which operates largely in California and Arizona.

The containment units are assembled by a contractor in Riverside and stored at a Los Angeles warehouse. Sales and distribution are handled by strategic partners with extensive existing networks, such as W.W. Grainger Inc. and Fischer Scientitle International.

"We were in the service business so we decided the best way to focus on what we do best--that is working with our clients on solutions--was to bring in the partners who could do the production and distribution better," said Kevin Minite, chief executive of both the service and product companies. "It also enabled us to get off the ground quicker."

Mintie Technologies Inc.

Year Founded: 2002

Core Business: Specialized barriers and containment units that block exposure to airborne particulates or contagious diseases

Employees in 2005: 8

Employees in 2006: 8

Goal: To be the leading supplier of products that enable hospitals to stay open during a bio-terror attack, pandemic or other health emergency

Driving Force: Lack of solutions for businesses that need to maintain a clean, safe environment during construction, maintenance or disaster response

BY DEBORAH CROWE

Staff Reporter