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What We Did
Distinguished Prof Geoff Chase, in collaboration with a team of doctors and engineers, have developed a simple application of fundamentals and manufacturing robotics to enable a single ventilator to be used with two patients at the same time, while personalising the care for each.
The secret to this novel ventilator is an active valve concept. This makes the double ventilator a low-cost (< $100) extension to current ventilator technology and is shown to be safer than having two patients breathing from one ventilator at the same time, also called “in parallel” breathing. The team plans to make the design and software freely available as an “open source” after testing is complete.
Who Was Involved
A project has been awarded $150,000 from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment’s Covid-19 Innovation Fund. The other members of the team are from Christchurch Hospital Senior Intensive Care, the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, Monash Malaysia, Liege University in Belgium, and CHU de Liege Hospital ICU.
Why It Matters
Perhaps most critically, in a world filled with potentially dangerous ideas about ventilating patients during this pandemic, this concept meets all the boxes for safety and personalisation. “We believe this can, and will, save countless lives internationally by doubling ventilator capacity and sparing doctors from having to make terrible end-of-life care choices,” Prof Chase explains. “This is a clever technology. It’s very simple, quickly implemented, and low-cost, but high impact, solution. We can have the first prototypes ready in one to three months, or faster, and pilot-trial tested quickly after that.”
Learn More
- Prof Chase and colleagues published this concept in the leading medicine journal Critical Care.
- Chase, J. G., Chiew, Y. S., Lambermont, B., Morimont, P., Shaw, G. M., & Desaive, T. (2020). Safe doubling of ventilator capacity: a last resort proposal for last resorts. Critical Care, 24, 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-020-02945-z
- www.canterbury.ac.nz/news/2020/new-uc-technology-doubling-ventilator-capacity-could-save-thousands-of-covid-19-patients
- UC researchers help world to breathe free amid Covid-19 resurgence | University of Canterbury | University of Canterbury
Photo Caption:
PhD student Lui Holder Pearson and Distinguished Professor Geoff Chase worked on the simple low-cost piece of technology that doubles the capacity of ventilators
