A team of scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER), Pune have designed and developed a low-cost ventilator. The prototype of the low-cost ventilator was a hybrid version of US and Italian ventilators for the ICU (intensive care unit).
Now, the low-cost ventilator will be mass-manufactured. According to an Indian Express report, IISER has formally transferred the technology and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Pune's Accurate Gauging and Instruments Pvt Ltd. The company will undertake mass manufacturing for regulatory approvals.
Umakant Rapol and Sunil Nair, both associate professors at the Department of Physics in the institute, developed the low-cost ventilator in the month of April which they put together with readily available material.
The scientists developed the low-cost ventilator after the hospitals were falling short of them amid the pandemic.
Rapol said, “We started work on the project on April 2 and we finished it by April 20. After which we are working on the calibrating and packaging the device so that it can be in some presentable form."
He added, “One advantage of this device is one can monitor the ventilator, parameters of the patients remotely and also through a mobile phone."
“It is simple, efficient as well as incorporates most of the design requirements from which ventilators who cater to Covid-19 patients have,” Hindustan Times quoted Nair as saying.
