With many locked inside their homes and 100s of patients in hospitals, India is leading a battle of a very different kind this time. Experts have predicted that India will also face scarcity of ventilators and other medical equipment in upcoming days owing to the COVID19 outbreak.
To make this struggle easy for our people, various manufacturing start-ups, engineers and manufacturers in India are joining hands for manufacturing ventilators, splitters, and other medical equipment. Like every one of us who is doing their part by social distancing, these people are going beyond their limits and trying to save India from the disaster. In this story read about the army of these people who are fighting on the front for us thereby helping.
AgVa Healthcare: Ventilator With Normal Power Back-up
AgVa Healthcare is the designer and manufacturer of the world’s cheapest, pocket-friendly and smart ventilator. Professor DiwakarVaish who is the founder of AgVa said, “Normal Indian spends a lot on healthcare because of lack of health insurance penetration and critical healthcare cost is high because of expensive ventilators.” He added that he and Dr. Deepak Agrawal who is professor-neurosurgery at AIIMS, New Delhi wanted to reduce the cost of critical healthcare in India and that is why they came up with economic, portable and easy to handle ventilators.
AgVa Ventilators can be controlled by a capacitive multi-touch interface with extremely simple control. Gesture control lets easy operation without much training. Vaish while explaining its benefits said, “One can use this ventilator easily while transporting patients from one place to another if needed.” He also added that this ventilator can be used in a hotel room with just a normal power back-up because it can be operated by just a smartphone via Bluetooth interface.
Recently there is a huge demand for the ventilators due to the COVID19 outbreak and to serve the growing demand, their production is happening 24 hours a day with an increased production rate of 1000 units a week. Vaish added that because of COVID-19 there has been a number of supply chain disruption and they are currently struggling with the same. He also tweeted asking for help to the government.
Overwhelmed with support from the Industry leaders. I thank you all for your support.
Currently, to keep up to the promise of 20,000 ventilators in the next 30 days, we just need help in Domestic and International logistics.— Prof. Diwakar Vaish (@diwakarvaish) March 24, 2020
Biodesign Innovation Labs: RespirAid Mechanical Ventilation Assist Device
Biodesign Innovation Labs is an international team of designers, engineers, doctors, and industry experts, working on building affordable life-support systems. CEO of Biodesign Innovation Labs Gautham Pasupuleti said, “Respiratory problem causes more than 1800 deaths per day and one of the main reasons for this mortality is the scarcity of good medical diagnostics and therapeutics.”
Adding to this, he said that there is a shortage of trained physicians at primary and secondary health centers in developing countries hence, maximum patient outcomes can be obtained if medical care in developing countries is not dependent on sophisticated and expensive devices. He added that patients and healthcare providers, therefore, need a safe, affordable and portable alternative to prolonged manual ventilation which they have achieved with their product RespirAid.
RespirAid by Biodesign Innovation Lab is a mechanical ventilation assist device. It addresses the inconsistency, unreliability, and exhaustion caused by an Ambu/self-inflating bag. It is an affordable and portable alternative to prolonged manual ventilation and prolonged manual ventilation. It is Suitable for Transport and emergency ventilation.
EthAum Venture Partners: 4 Way Ventilator Splitter
EthAum Venture Partners is an Incubator and Accelerator for the Deep Tech Startups. Managing Partner of EthAum Pankaj Gupta is trying to build and donate 1,000 4-way Ventilator Splitter to the hospitals in Jaipur and nearby cities. He is asking people for support on twitter and has gotten support from many.
NEED VOLUNTEERS IN ALL THE MAJOR CITIES: Considering, we may run out of #ventilators pretty quickly, we need to work on a 4-way #splitter solution to save lives.
Splitter solution will be truly fast & cost-efficient way of saving 1,000s of lives. #CoronaUpdatesInIndia
1/6— Pankaj Gupta (@pg211183) March 22, 2020
Pankaj is post-graduate in Materials Science from the University of Rochester. While talking to us about the initiative, Pankaj said, “After looking at research papers, experimentation done in Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Canada, etc., I found that there are few splitter designs that have been deployed successfully in the past.” Prototypes of the Ventilator Splitters are now ready with him but he is currently struggling to get them tested in hospitals due to lock-down.
Caring for India: Bringing Engineers Fighting COVID19
This group with the help of academia and Industry experts is trying to figure out what solutions they can come out with to help the administration defend citizens against the COVID19. They are currently getting multiple requests from volunteers wanting to be a part of the initiative.
Two independent teams that are working on ventilator project. They have make good progress. This is one of them. We will keep you posted.@bhak_sala pic.twitter.com/38IjeX48hw
— Caring Indians (@CaringIndians) March 23, 2020
This is a group of engineering experts, computer techies and product managers, designers, professors, students, communication and content developers currently ideating and designing products and they are also working on to streamline the process of manufacturing and distributing those products at the same time. The initiative is in the nascent stage and getting a huge response on twitter from people working in different domains. Recently, Pune city administration contacted the group. They mentioned that all permissions and all facilitation will be done.
Latest update – Pune city administration contacted the group. They mentioned that all permissions and all facilitation will be done. Thank you so much sir
