Indian Engineers Join Hands to Save Lives by Developing Low-cost Ventilator for COVID-19 Through Crowdfunding
The whole world is committing to fight COVID-19 pandemic together in many ways. From social distancing, helping the underprivileged, to being philanthropic by donating to healthcare organizations and other institutions throughout the world, people are doing everything they can. However, these are only preventive measures, they don’t fully stop the increasing infections and eventual death tolls from rising. Overwhelmed by the alarming statistics, engineers from everywhere are desperately looking for methods to help ease the problem. Hospitals are running short of medical equipment like Ventilators to support the ailing patients, thus arising a need for more mechanical ventilators. Keeping that in mind, a big team of engineers from Sphinx Worldbiz Ltd has collaborated with engineers at TimeTooth Technologies who are resolute to build low-cost, quick-building mechanical ventilators, whose design is to be made available Open-Source, following the lead of many institutions from all over the world to help save humanity. The ventilator’s design can be picked up by any manufacturer who wants to produce ventilators and provide them at the earliest to the hospitals. This allows its reach to the grassroots levels.
The project is a non-profit philanthropic initiative where Sphinx Worldbiz will be providing its prototyping expertise and services to take this project ahead at no charge. The teams of engineers from both the organizations developing the ventilator bring trust, innovation, and functionality to the table owing to their professional qualifications and more importantly, years of expertise and great knowledge of the subject matter. The designs are being developed in close consultation with expert medical professionals.
To support the project, TimeTooth Technologies has made an appeal for a fundraiser. The campaign to gather the contributions has been made active and all the collections will directly and only go to support the development of the design which can support hospitals in saving their patients suffering from the disease at a larger scale and in time.
If we take India’s for instance in terms of the availability of the medical equipment, with a massive population of 1.3 bn, India has only 48,000 ventilators at present and most of them are already occupied. Also, the number of fluent breathing assistance in the existing ventilators is obscure. Experts say that India would require 80-100 times the available ventilators, grounded on an average 21-day stay on a ventilator for a coronavirus patient. The situation is scary and going by the global ratios, the situation in other countries, many of which are developed nations, is scarier, for instance, the USA, Italy, Netherlands, etc. Thus, arising a need for a fleet of low-cost, quick building ventilators.
The initiative to design and develop low-cost mechanical ventilators is a philanthropic effort to save many lives at a time, all over the world. The low-cost ventilators to be designed by the two organisations are not only based on open-source format but are going to be extremely helpful in fulfilling their purpose. The project and the design will include an automated ventilator with physician assist controls, medical-grade, low cost (over 10-15% of the cost of traditional ICU ventilators), reliable design for practical use, and all the essential features operational in remote areas, and normal hospitals.
The pandemic is indeed distressing, but if all of us are in it together, we can make it work and not to forget, every contribution helps.
If you wish to contribute, below are the links to follow:
For international contributors:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/covid19-india-ventilator-development-project
For Indian contributors:
https://www.ketto.org/fundraiser/Covid19-indian-MedicalGrade-Rugged-LowCost-ventilator
