COVID-19: Amid ventilator crunch, IISc team's indigenous prototype to be out by mid-April

TV Prabhakar, Principal Research Scientist at the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering (DESE), who is a founder of the project, said the aim is to allow its use free of cost.

A bench-top test setup assembled at the IISc high-speed wind tunnel complex to experimentally test ideas and concepts during the ventilator prototype development phase. A test lung (seen on the bottom left of the image) is used in these experiments to rou

BENGALURU: To tackle the shortage of ventilators in case the country sees a sudden spike in COVID-19 patients, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) are designing an indigenous electro-mechanical device. This overcomes the limitations of having to procure certain components from other countries that many ventilator producers face.

Researchers are finalising the prototype and are looking to use the nanofabrication facility at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, IISc, to scale up production of oxygen and pressure sensors required in the ventilator, as they build it from scratch.

The ventilator uses only components found or made in India and is based on guidelines issued by the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, as per a communication from the institution. It is also collaborating with "potential manufacturers" to see what critical components are available with them, before incorporating these in the final design.

The prototype is likely to come out by mid-April. TV Prabhakar, Principal Research Scientist at the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering (DESE), who is a founder of the project, said the aim is to allow its use free of cost.

While the project kicked off ten days ago, the team is hoping for manufacturers to scale this up with prototypes at their disposal by the end of April.

The institute said the team built some components and co-opted others, for instance, to store and mix air and oxygen, they reused sedimentation tanks found in household RO water purifiers. To check pressure levels, the team used sensors similar to those used to detect air pressure in car tyres.

The team is also developing from scratch a flow rate sensor (which shows exactly how much air is flowing into the patient’s lungs) and is getting inputs from doctors to simplify the interface of the ventilator to allow even untrained technicians or nurses to use it in case of an emergency.

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has expressed interest in supporting mass production, said the institute.