An Indian American couple has developed a low-cost, portable ventilator meant to help doctors around the world treat COVID-19 patients, Yahoo Singapore News reports.
Devesh Ranjan, a professor and associate chair in the prestigious Georgia Tech’s George W Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and his wife Kumuda Ranjan, a practicing family physician in Atlanta are concerned about the lack of adequate ventilators to treat COVID-19. Within three weeks they developed their own emergency ventilator and built a prototype version.
The ventilator, which is called Open-AirVentGT, was developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology, according to NDTV. The Open-AirVentGT essentially takes over the body’s breathing process. It uses electronic sensors to manage respiration rate, tidal volume (the amount of air moved into and out of the lungs during each cycle), inspiration and expiration ratio, and pressure on the lungs.
According to a press release from Georgia Tech, the ventilator is designed to make breathing easier by helping trigger the patient’s own breaths, The American Bazaar reports.
The ventilators the Ranjans have created are not as sophisticated as ICU ventilators, according to Yahoo Singapore News.
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Professor Devesh Ranjan says the ventilators can be manufactured for $100 and sold at a price point of $500, NDTV reports. A press release from Georgia Tech says that the ventilator is designed to be produced for $300, according to The American Bazaar. Typically, a ventilator like the one they’ve created costs $10,000.
“The whole goal of this project was to make a low-cost makeshift ventilator that gives those controls to the physician,” Dr Kumuda Ranjan said.
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