Ventilator Improvement Systems for Readily Available Advanced Ventilator Designs

Abstract

When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, it brought with it many challenges, including an exceedingly high demand for low-cost ventilators to combat the growing spread of the virus. However due to associated high costs, medical facilities cannot acquire enough working ventilators for the increasing number of people requiring them to combat the COVID-19 virus. This project aims to mitigate this obstacle by designing and building an efficient and low-cost ventilator that is on constant standby for COVID-19 support. It incorporates readily available, household materials and implements a sophisticated control system in its design. Many individuals in industry have designed or are working on creating low-cost, basic prototypes. These prototypes, on the other hand, are more limited in capability, which indicates a potential for development of their designs. Current ventilator designs, such as the MIT Emergency Ventilator, include automatically driven bag-valve resuscitators rather than hand-operated resuscitators, which meet the requirement of a low cost. This design can be enhanced by replacing the bag-valve masks with other household products, such as a kickball, to replace manual resuscitation. Additionally, an advanced control system, with controls and sensors for tidal flow, air pressure, and oxygen concentration can be implemented. A design that incorporates these features would be low-cost, and will help reduce the current demand for ventilators.