PORTABLE VENTILATOR DEVELOPED IN INDIA

AIIMS- All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, in collaboration with a private company, has developed a portable ventilator, so small that it can fit into your pocket. It can run on natural air flow without a dedicated oxygen supply and can be controlled by an Android app.

This is the iniative of Dr Deepak Agrawal, a professor in the department of neurosurgery at AIIMS, who in collaboration with Diwakar Vaish, a robotics researcher who heads A-SET Robotics, and helped developed this fully functional ventilator.

”This ventilator is easy to use and soon will be available in the market for a price at less than Rs 15,000 (233.95 USD). Basic ventilators cost above 2.5 lakhs ( 3,900 USD)  in the market”.Dr Agarwal said.

“There are lot of patients in AIIMS and in hospitals across India who are required to be on ventilator for a long period of time and are unable to arrange them because of the expensive costs and the technical expertise required to operate them. says Dr Agrawal.

The portable ventilator  uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to adjust air supply for normal breathing of the patient, as per HT. Vaish said, “There is no requirement for oxygen cylinders, which cost between Rs 3,000 and Rs 4,000 a day (46.79 USD and 62.39 USD) .” “It works by pushing the atmospheric air into the lungs of the patients who cannot breathe on their own. ventilators currently in use also push in air, but they do it at a fixed frequency that does not necessarily match the patient’s breathing pattern, which may cause low oxygen saturation” . According to Dr Agrawal  by HT.

Patients required to stay on ventilators for the long term can now breathe easy at a cheaper rate.