COVID-19: How to make a ventilator
COVID-19 is a virus that attacks the body’s respiratory system and ventilators play a vital role in maintaining the body’s breathing processes while the body can fight off the infection. This makes ventilators a staple piece to any COVID-19 patient’s hospital bed.
What is a ventilator?
In a nutshell, a ventilator allows oxygen to enter the lungs and carbon dioxide to leave the lungs. They come in two forms, mechanical and non-invasive.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52036948
How to make a ventilator?
A ventilator needs
Oxygen gas
A motor – to raise or lower the gas pressure as well as pump oxygen into the patient
A way to control oxygen levels
A power supply
Pretty simple, however, there are loads of complex engineering to ensure that the correct amount of oxygen is being pumped to meet patient needs. There also need to be valued to keep the direction of gas going the correct way, oxygen towards the patient and carbon dioxide leaving the patient. There would also need to be a backup power source in case of any power outages or if the patient needed to be moved.
There are have been many innovative ways to make ventilators and the science community have been creative in developing ‘homemade’ ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients. In my research, I read about a group of Italian engineers who made a ventilator out of a snorkelling mask. The patent for the design is free for anyone to use as parts of the machine can be printed off using a 3D printer. I also came across an incredible article about a Chinese family who had a brain-damaged son and needed a ventilator to keep him alive, however, healthcare was too expensive. They made their own ventilator using a hand pump which required 25,920 pumps a day, they did this for a year until a relative learnt how to make one from a TV show.
Homemade Chinese Ventilator: https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/son-kept-alive-with-23-homemade-ventilator-221189.html
Italian Snorkelling Ventilator: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/scuba-mask-ventilator-coronavirus-covid-18021870
Why do they take so long to be released?
In the UK all medical devices need to meet medical and healthcare product regulations (MHRA) in order to make them safe for patients. There are many medical tests that ventilators go through such as tests for electrical safety, human factors testing as well as repeated tests to make sure that the ventilator works each time it is turned on.
A test that I have some experience in is chemical characterisation testing. You may have heard a plastic product such as baby bottles or Tupperware being ‘BPA free’. BPA (Bisphenol A) is a plastic additive used to make some plastics and research suggest that is may have cancer-causing properties. Many plastic additives can cause long term health problems such as infertility, asthma and lung disease. Most ventilators are made of plastics as its easy, cheap and malleable. A chemical characterisation test allows people to see what plastic additives are being released as the product is being used as well as the concentration of them. This is an important test as if a vulnerable patient is breathing in oxygen full of bad plastic additives this could be a serious long-term problem, and the ventilator could be causing more harm than good.
It is important that these tests are being conducted to ensure that there are no more risks to the patients. It is essential to get ventilators out to help reduce the impact of COVID-19 however it is fundamental that these ventilators go through tests to ensure safety.