Expert team creates prototype of low-cost mechanical ventilator in Pune

PUNE: A team from BJ Medical College & Sassoon Hospital and College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP), has developed a prototype mechanical ventilator specially for Covid-19 patients.
“The prototype mechanical Artificial Manual Breathing Unit-based ventilator system can adjust required tidal volume from 200ml to 550ml as well as breath cycles from 10 to 30 cycles/minute.The best feature of the prototype is that it can adjust inhalation to exhalation (I/E) ratio of 1:2, 1:3, 1:4. The prototype has tested successfully in a virtual environment and, after necessary certification and approvals, very soon we will perform clinical studies on the device,” said assistant professor Sandeep Anasane from the department of production engineering at CoEP, who was the co-investigator of the project.
Apart from Anasane, the five-member team included project in-charge associate professor Sonali Salve from B J Medical College & Sassoon Hospital, Swapnil Bukshete researcher at Biomedical Technology Incubation Centre (BETiC) CoEP, Abhijeet Bhagat, who is the chief executive officer of Atmen Technovention Pvt Ltd and a former researcher at BETiC-COEP, freelance designer Subir Bhaduri and Deepak Dhiwar, a non-teaching staff member at CoEP.
Since March 27, the team had been working single-mindedly towards developing a prototype mechanical ventilator. On Tuesday night, the first successful prototype was made by the team of doctor-engineers. While the basic model ventilator has been specially designed for Covid-19 patients, it can also be modified to include other uses later on, explained Anasane.
Anasane further said that the ventilator will definitely be low-cost due to its indegenious design and technology. At the same time, it cannot be compared to a high-end ventilator as those perform a number of other functions along with basic ones.
Explaining the complex terms, Bhagat said, “Now, the tidal volume is the amount of air volume that can be supplied by the Artificial Manual Breathing Unit bag to the person’s lungs at a time. Each person has a specific capacity of oxygen that he or she can inhale depending upon various parameters such as age, weight, and so on, and anything more or less can be damaging to the organ. This ventilator can control the tidal volume supplied to the lungs. The breathing cycle controls how many breathes you take in a minute and the I/E ratio stands for every 1 second of time taken for inhaling, what is the time for exhaling.”
Bhagat further said that while virtual tests of the ventilator have been successful, the team will now write to the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) under the Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, for certification that can lead to clinical trials in the future.
While Salvi helped the team with inputs related to the clinical aspect of the project, CoEP director BB Ahuja and Ajay Chandanwale, dean of BJ Medical College & Sassoon Hospital, provided the team support and resources to develop the prototype.