Low-Cost Emergency Ventilator

The current pandemic caused due to COVID-19 has led to shortages of various critical medical equipment, one such is mechanical ventilators. This shortage threatens our medical infrastructure at the regional level, which has caused spikes in mortality rates. Since mechanical ventilators are one of the most critical equipment in light of the current coronavirus, this has created a dire need for its immediate supply. It is challenging to ease the demand, because the conventional mechanical ventilators are quite expensive, complex in design and the time needed to manufacture is more, around 120 days. These conventional ventilators cannot induce the shortage gaps, unlike emergency ventilators. So, various companies and universities are now looking at lucrative ways to adapt to the shortcomings of these ventilators. This paper mentions various ventilator prototypes, which are low cost, easily deployable, and light weight, which makes these ventilators portable. The design mentioned in this paper works as the simple automated manual resuscitator device, that is usually used before initiating the mechanical ventilation. The system uses common off-the-shelf parts that are easily available in the supply chain. The system can be operated with minimal training by any non-clinicians and does not require any skills. This paper aims to bring light upon emergency ventilators which can be created swiftly and also meets the basic requirements of the conventional mechanical ventilators while being low cost and rapidly deployable.