Invention Roundup: Inventors Rally in Response to a Health Crisis
New products and devices address COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic is igniting a flurry of invention to address urgent issues of prevention and detection and treatment. From multiple efforts to address the need for ventilators to open-source face shields to drones that can detect potential respiratory infection, university researchers, engineers and private entrepreneurs have stepped up with innovative solutions to the current health crisis. Here is a roundup of just a few:
The ‘Coventor’
A team at the University of Minnesota has designed a mechanical ventilator that is inexpensive and made of easy to obtain materials.Unlike traditional ventilators, the Coventor does not require pressurized oxygen. The device consists of a frame and mechanical actuator that compresses a traditional ambulatory ventilation bag (aka Ambu bag or bag valve mask), which is connected to the patient’s endotracheal tube and is used to pump either external compressed oxygen or ambient air.
The ‘Pandemic Drone’
Researchers at the University of South Australia are working to develop a drone that can spot people with potential respiratory infections, remotely. A wall-mounted AI device that listens for coughing and sneezing to predict and monitor pandemics was recently reported in Medgadget, but this latest monitoring device is mobile. The developers say the drone technology could be useful in monitoring and controlling the spread of pandemics, such as the current COVID-19 emergency.
STERRAD Sterilizers
ASP has just qualified a new reprocessing protocol that can add two extra uses to common N95 masks, tripling their useful lifetime. Already installed STERRAD systems can be easily implemented to process the masks, and ASP claims that a single STERRAD setup can reprocess 480 masks per day.
The ‘E-Vent’
A group of MIT engineers are working to submit a variant of the MIT E-Vent design to the FDA, under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), a ventilator made out of a bag valve mask (aka Ambu-Bags) and readily available electronics, actuators, and motors. The E-Vent, as the new ventilator is called, uses a plastic device to squeeze on the pump of the bag valve mask and so provide breathing assistance to the patient. Its design has been made open source and the designers are inviting others to help refine it, test it, and to provide feedback on any potential issues or improvements.
An Open Source Face Shield
“The Georgia Tech mechanical engineering team is working to modify open source face shield designs so they can be manufactured in high volumes for the rapid response environment that COVID-19 requires,” said Christopher Saldana, another Georgia Tech professor involved in the effort. “Our team has modified these designs using a range of product and process optimization methods, including removing certain features and standardizing tool use. By working on cross-functional and cross-disciplinary teams and directly involving healthcare practitioners and high-volume manufacturers, we will be able to respond to this effort at the scale and speed required.”
The ‘Terminator CoV’
By bathing the masks with light in the UV-C range, the Terminator CoV device can process up to 500 masks per hour. This is quite spectacular, given the current shortage of masks, and should be enough to keep most clinical facilities from running out of masks during our current pandemic.
The ‘CoVent’
“A ventilator supports a patient who is no longer able to maintain their own airways, but sadly there is currently a significant shortage, both in the UK and other countries around the world,” Dyson wrote. Dyson said the company had designed and built an entirely new ventilator, called the “CoVent,” since he received a call 10 days ago from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
