IISER Pune develops a low-cost, versatile and mass producible Ventilator For COVID-19

Ventilator is a machine used to assist patients in breathing. The possible shortage of ventilators during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created a need to develop low-cost ventilators that can also be produced rapidly.

An opportunity to contribute presented when Dr Naresh Sharma from the International Relations Office of IISER Pune brought together faculty members at the Institute, Dr Umakant Rapol and Dr Sunil Nair, with members from OpenBreathTech, IndoGenius and King's College, London. The team created CAD model of the Bharucha Ventilator - a promising low-cost ventilator that is already in use and could be scaled up through digitization. The designs created are open-source and available on www.openbreathtech.com.

While working on the project, the team at IISER Pune realised the need for incorporating additional functionality to make them useful for patients with delicate lung conditions that are typically found in COVID19 patients. In this video produced by the Science Media Centre at IISER Pune, Dr Rapol and Dr Nair describe a new low-cost ventilator prototype they have now developed with locally available and easily source-able parts.


www.smciiserpune.com
Science Media Centre, IISER Pune