One of the most pressing concerns about the pandemic’s surge of patients with acute respiratory failure has been a national shortage of ventilators. According to an estimate by the Society of Critical Care Medicine, 960,000 Covid-19 patients might need artificial respiration at some point, but the United States has only about 200,000 of the machines. Roughly half are older models that might not be optimal for the most critically ill patients, and many are already in use to treat those with other severe ailments. To try to expand capacity, many faculty and staff members, as well as students, have gotten to work.
An interdisciplinary team from the University of Florida is working on a prototype that could be made from hardware-store supplies, and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have released open-source design plans for an inexpensive emergency ventilator in development there. Faculty members at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville collaborated with their counterparts at Clemson University to make a 3-D-printed valve that would allow two patients to use a single ventilator. Dan Abbott, who teaches architectural and engineering design at Southern Maine Community College, used a 3-D printer to create a starfish-shaped connector that could allow up to four patients to use the same ventilator. The college is coordinating with business and medical partners to see if it can be used in a hospital setting.
Students are also engaging in some unplanned experiential learning. Jacob Goodman, a junior engineering major at Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York system, designed and built a functioning ventilator prototype from parts he bought at Walmart, along with a 3-D-printed gear system that modulates a patient’s breathing pattern. Goodman hopes to refine his prototype and then get help from industry experts to turn it into a market-worthy product.
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