University develops automatic, hand-held, inexpensive ventilator units to combat coronavirus pandemic

As the demand for ventilators rises with the number of coronavirus patients growing across the globe, a Texas-based university has developed an automatic, hand-held and inexpensive breathing unit that can soon be used to combat the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed over 37,500 people.

A total of 782,365 COVID-19 cases have been reported across more than 175 countries and territories with 37,582 deaths reported so far, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Across the United States, hospitals are facing shortages of ventilators, some medical device makers, including Philips, have agreed to ramp up supplies.

But because patients diagnosed with or suspected to have COVID-19 often require breathing support, there is widespread concern that these devices won't be developed and shipped quickly enough.

The University has developed an automated bag valve mask ventilator unit. Image credit" Rice University/Brandon Martin

Texas-based Rice University and Canadian global health design firm Metric Technologies have developed an automated bag valve mask ventilation unit that can be built for less than  $300 worth of parts and help patients undergoing treatment for COVID-19.

The collaboration expects to share the plans for the ventilator by making them freely available online to anyone in the world.

The varsity team designed and built a programmable device able to squeeze a bag valve mask. These masks are typically carried by emergency medical personnel to help get air into the lungs of people having difficulty breathing on their own. But the masks are difficult to squeeze by hand for more than a few minutes at a time.

"It's automatic, electric, and works independently of a tech," Wettergreen, a varsity professor and member of the Design Kitchen team, told PTI.

"It's not designed for people who are critical cases, but rather who are in respiratory distress," the professor said.

That delineation is important: the automated Bag Mask Valve (BVM) would take less-critical patients off ventilators and free them up for only those in dire need. The benefit could be a game-changer for those on the front lines of the COVID-19 battle, Wettergreen said.

"When a crisis hits, we use our skills to contribute solutions. If you can help, you should, and I'm proud that we're responding to the call," said the professor.

The design has caught the attention of the Department of Defense, which may authorise the Navy to utilise it in the near future.

It's a huge feat for the small unit, dubbed the Apollo BVM team, whose students worked around the clock and took classes online in order to deliver the project as soon as possible.

Rohith Malya - an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, an adjunct assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice, and a principal at Metric Technologies - coined the name as a tribute to Rice's history with NASA and former US President John F Kennedy's now-famous speech kicking off the nation's efforts to go to the moon.

"This project appeals to our ingenuity, it's a Rice-based project and it's for all of humanity. And we're on an urgent timescale. We decided to throw it all on the table and see how far we go," he said.

Malya inspired the Rice project two years ago after seeing families try to keep critically ill loved ones at the Kwai River Christian Hospital in Thailand alive by bag-ventilating them for hours on end. He expects the new Apollo BVM to serve that purpose eventually, but the need is now worldwide.

"This is a clinician-informed end-to-end design that repurposes the existing BVM global inventory toward widespread and safe access to mechanical ventilation," Malya said, noting that more than 100 million bag valve masks are manufactured around the world each year.



from Firstpost Tech Latest News https://ift.tt/3atyDaM

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

COVID-19 origins: Should we pay more attention to the lab leak theory and formally investigate it?

Image
A year and a half into the pandemic, we still do not know exactly where the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, came from. The prevailing view so far has been that the virus “spilled over” from bats into humans. But there are increasing calls to investigate the possibility that it emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China, where Covid first appeared at the end of 2019. So what do we know for sure, and what do we need still to find out? We know the sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is close to that of bat coronaviruses . Several decades ago its “ancestor” was circulating in bat populations in southern Asia. But there are still many unanswered questions: we don’t know how the virus arrived in Wuhan, how its sequence evolved to allow human infection, and under what conditions it infected the first people who crossed its path. And for each of these stages, we don’t know whether there was a human contribution (direct or indirect). Zoonotic transmission pathways, in other words the pas
Read more

Menstrual cups are cheaper, more sustainable than pads and tampons for women

Image
Every year in America, women spend at least US$2.8 billion on sanitary pads and tampons that can take hundreds of years to decompose . Is there a more economical and environmentally friendly way? To find out, we asked Susan Powers , a professor of sustainable environmental systems at Clarkson University about her work comparing the environmental impact of tampons, sanitary pads and menstrual cups. What is a menstrual cup? A menstrual cup is a type of reusable feminine hygiene product. It’s a small, flexible bell-shaped cup made of rubber or silicone that a woman inserts into her vagina to catch and collect menstrual fluid. It can be used for up to 12 hours, after which it is removed to dispose of the fluid and cleaned. The cup is rinsed with hot water and soap between each insertion and sterilized in boiling water at least once per period. A cup can last up to 10 years . Although menstrual cups have been around for decades, they historically have been less popular than pads or ta
Read more

Human bodies respond to infections differently depending on the time of day

Image
When microorganisms – such as bacteria or viruses – infect us, our immune system jumps into action. It’s highly trained to sense and eliminate infections and clear up any damage caused by them. It’s typically assumed our immune systems work the exact same way regardless of whether an infection occurs during the day or at night. But research spanning over half a century now shows our bodies actually respond differently at day and night. The reason for this is our body clock, and the fact that each cell in the body, including our immune cells, can tell what time of day it is. Our body clock has evolved over millions of years to help us survive. Every cell in the body has a collection of proteins that indicate the time depending on their levels. Knowing whether it’s day or night means our body can adjust its functions and behaviours (such as when we want to eat) to the correct time. Our body clock does this by generating 24 hour rhythms (also termed circadian rhythms ) in how cells f
Read more