With the setting in of the second wave of covid-19, there is round the corner, a growth in the need for ventilators and related interventions. While hospital ICU beds do come with ventilators, makeshift ones will not be so, hence the need. Indian Institute of Science researchers have come up with several non-pharmaceutical interventions such as ICU ventilators, oxygen supply manifolds and oxygen concentrators which will each satisfy different sets of needs.
Low-cost solutions
In 2020, when the pandemic set in within India, Sushobhan Avasthi, Associate Professor with Centre for Nanoscience and Engineering and his team wanted to build low-cost ventilators. But as the project evolved, they realised that what was needed was a more sophisticated device that could sense when the patients were able to breathe on their own, and then wean them off gently so that they could become independent again. “In September we were ready with the D3 edition of smart ventilators that were good enough to be used in the ICU,” says Dr Avasthi. They teamed up with the company Vasmed with an aim to produce these ventilators for the market. “These would have cost about 1.5 lakh rupees,” says Anoop Varghese, COO of Vasmed, pegging the cost at approximately a third of the price of commercially available ones.
The group worked with Dr Justin Aryabhata Gopaldas, of the Manipal Hospital, Bangalore, to get inputs and feedback as they developed the devices. “There were many doctors involved initially, perhaps it was my familiarity with physics that helped. We discussed many things, for example, when a breath was taken what kinds of waves were formed,” says Dr Gopaldas. However, the effort did not see fruition during the first wave. Vasmed needed the pull of the market to be able to finance a complete testing and certification of the module.
No prior experience
The group then also started looking out for other interventions that would be useful in this juncture. They came up with the idea of the oxygen supply manifold, which is a system using which oxygen may be supplied to several patients from a central source and the amount of oxygen supplied may be adjusted.
“We started this project with zero experience in medical devices, let alone a critical one like a ventilator… Prof. Prosenjit Sen developed the touchscreen user interface. Prof. Saurabh Chandorkar designed the embedded system – the brain of the ventilator. Prof. Srinivasan Raghavan oversaw the development of the pneumatics. Most crucial of all was the enthusiasm of our students, specifically Harshvardhan Gupta and Ankit Rao,” says Dr Avasthi in recollection.
Sturdy concentrator
Meanwhile, in the Materials Engineering lab, efforts were on to produce an oxygen concentrator. Ambient air contains about 70% nitrogen and about 28% oxygen and other gases; the work of a concentrator is to separate the oxygen and collect air enriched with oxygen to the patient. “By August 2020 we had the third generation of the concentrator ready. It worked to concentrate more than 90% in five litres and 80% in ten litres. Not just this, it could run non-stop for months together without getting heated up,” says Praveen Ramamurthy, who led the effort. By September they had the system ready, but interest had died down.
“In the last couple of weeks, again I have been getting many mails and calls enquiring about this,” says Dr Ramamurthy.
Certification for safety
The device has the advantage that it can pump the data into the cloud, which can be shared with a doctor for monitoring use. The group is going to apply for a certification which will test for electrical and pressure safety and also biocompatibility. They expect it will take about two weeks to obtain.
Both the oxygen supply manifold and the oxygen concentrator are very much the need of the hour, the group feels, and can be manufactured easily.