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MRIGlobal Proud to Serve as Prime Contractor for Portable Biocontainment Unit  

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HHS/ASPR Exercise “Tranquil Passport” Supported by MRIGlobal

 

Kansas City, Mo.: (June 26, 2025) – MRIGlobal is proud to have served as prime contractor on development of two new Portable Biocontainment Units (PBCU), which were unveiled in May 2025 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) during a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The PBCU is the first domestic resource for isolating and transporting patients with high-consequence infectious diseases via ground and air to specialized care facilities. 

Given the immediate risks associated with possible future outbreaks, pandemics, and related bioterrorism threats, the ability to provide biocontainment in patient transport is critical. This makes the PBCU a necessary asset to the country’s ability to respond to these threats and protect global health. For the first time, the U.S. has the equipment needed to transport highly infectious disease patients safely, providing care for the patients, while protecting the medical staff and the American people. 

Built upon MRIGlobal’s decades of biocontainment expertise, the PBCU allows for the isolation and biocontainment of highly pathogenic infectious disease patients and providing them medical care during transport. The interior design provides a safe environment for a full spectrum of critical care for those patients while allowing for thorough post-deployment decontamination using vaporized hydrogen peroxide. The unit also maintains containment in the event of emergency landings or mid-air rapid decompression events to ensure the safety of the medical staff and flight crew. 

The week of June 23rd, MRIGlobal supported ASPR’s Tranquil Passport, a full-scale exercise to field test the PBCU in the transportation of infectious disease patients. The exercise allowed the department to test existing plans, processes, procedures, authorities, and capabilities to coordinate the movement of several patients from Canada to multiple locations within the United States. The exercise occurred over four days with coordination from local, state, federal, international, and nongovernmental partners including MRIGlobal. 

“For more than a decade, the U.S. government has trusted MRIGlobal to produce mobile laboratories and flyable biocontainment units that support global health and national security. Whether asked to help evacuate Ebola doctors to receive westernized medical care or support field-forward Ebola outbreak diagnostics, MRIGlobal’s team of engineers and infectious disease experts has answered the call,” said Ian Colrain, PhD, President & CEO, MRIGlobal. “In collaboration with our primary subcontractor and partner HHI Corporation, we are proud to have led development of the PBCU and be involved in supporting the recent Tranquil Passport mission. The PBCU serves as an important asset in response to current and future infectious disease and bioterrorism threats.”  

The PBCU is unique because of its ability to operate from the platform of large aircraft, including a C-130 or L-100, providing flexibility in where it can land and operate. Once on the ground, the PBCU can be loaded onto a customized trailer for ground operation and transit to a hospital. Because patients can be isolated inside the PBCU and continue to receive care, hospitals do not have to activate their biosecurity protocols. 

Each PBCU can safely evacuate critically ill patients while maintaining biocontainment through a system of regulated air flow, HEPA filtration between all airspaces, and cascading pressure differentials between airspaces. The system is divided into a patient room, an anteroom, and a medical staff room. The entire system is held negative to the aircraft cargo bay and all exhausted air passes through two stage HEPA filtration to protect the flight crew. Real-time pressure monitoring with audible and visible alarms verifies desired pressure differentials while an interior camera feeds interior and exterior video monitors for constant patient monitoring. All interior walls are coated with a seamless epoxy coating formulated to ensure containment while surviving the thermal, mechanical and chemical stresses introduced during loading, flight, decontamination, and emergency landing scenarios. 

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ABOUT MRIGLOBAL
For more than 80 years, MRIGlobal has improved people’s lives through scientific and engineering research, producing innovative solutions to important biological, chemical, and engineering challenges. Founded as an independent, nonprofit organization, MRIGlobal performs customized research and development services for health and defense-focused organizations. This includes expertise in clinical research support, infectious disease and biological threat agent detection, global biological engagement, in vitro diagnostics, and laboratory management and operations. Visit mriglobal.org to learn more. 

CONTACT:
Mark Crouser, MRIGlobal
mcrouser@mriglobal.org 
816-582-8839 

 

 

Read more about the HHS exercise –
ASPR kicks off Tranquil Passport Exercise

(Text copied from the ASPR HHS press release link above)

ASPR kicks off Tranquil Passport Exercise to test new portable biocontainment unit and healthcare system’s ability to isolate and treat high-consequence infectious disease patients

Today, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and more than 50 partner organizations began the first of several complex patient movement activities as part of the Tranquil Passport exercise. This four-day, coordinated full-scale exercise will test and validate the nation’s ability to safely and securely transport simulated patients with high-consequence infectious diseases to regional treatment centers, and will demonstrate capabilities of the new Portable Biocontainment Unit (PBCU). Lessons learned will inform future exercises and real-world responses.

“Testing our new biocontainment unit makes America safer and strengthens our national security,” said HHS Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response John Knox. “This cutting-edge technology allows us to more quickly and safely transport patients to treatment centers in the U.S. for definitive care, while ensuring containment of the simulated highly infectious disease used in the exercise. Exercises like this are essential to testing our healthcare delivery systems and improving our ability to save lives and protect the health care workforce.”

The Tranquil Passport exercise began with government officials facilitating a series of coordination calls to plan the movement of a cluster of simulated American high-consequence infectious disease patients from Toronto, Canada to the United States on June 24. Exercise patients were moved today using the PCBU to Washington, D.C. to be transferred to Medstar Washington Hospital Center, Children’s National Medical Center, and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. The Department of State’s Containerized Bio-Containment systems (CBCS), designed to transport high-consequence infectious disease patients via air from abroad to the U.S. for treatment, was also used.

ASPR’s PCBU will be used to transport additional simulated patients for the duration of the exercise to treatment centers at Health + Hospitals/Bellevue (New York City, NY); Emory University Hospital and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (Atlanta, GA); and University of North Carolina Medical Center (Chapel Hill, NC). These facilities are HHS supported Level 1 Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Centers (RESPTCs), part of the tiered National Special Pathogen System designed to protect patients, communities and the healthcare workforce.

The PBCU is the first domestic resource for isolating and transporting patients with high-consequence infectious diseases, such as Ebola, over long distances to RESPTCs. It is the only multi-patient, multi-modal transport solution of it’s kind and it was designed and built in America. The unit can be transported over long distances by air on a C-130 or L-100 aircraft or by ground via a specialized trailer that can be pulled by a tractor or semi-truck. The new PBCU builds on and improves isolation and transport technology. The PBCU allows for continuous treatment of multiple patients isolated in the unit and for onboard care teams to switch out during longer transportation or until the patients can receive more definitive care at a RESPTC hospital. In addition to having the only domestic patient transport authority for high-consequence infectious diseases through HHS, the PBCU’s interior is uniquely customizable to accommodate up to 10 ambulatory patients and reach virtually any airport in the U.S., which current technology cannot do.

HHS and the U.S. Departments of State and Defense previously collaborated on a series of exercises to move Americans acting as high-consequence infectious disease patients from overseas to the United States for treatment. A video summary of the most recent patient movement exercise in that series, Tranquil Terminus, is available for review here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL1BEwy-2DQ.

For more information on Tranquil Passport or the PBCU visit: https://aspr.hhs.gov/Tranquil-Passport/Pages/default.aspx.

Video sound bites of the exercise are available for download at: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/fsi366v7luelqble2v6v2/AKCywMQdqPIH-XZpNzoh6To?rlkey=i5u8zsze17lv0lnlq64pu77ju&e=1&dl=0.

Photos of the exercise will be available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/asprgov/albums/72177720326305186/.