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NASA engineers have designed a mass-produced ventilator designed for coronavirus patients, and it could get emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration by the weekend.
A team of engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California designed and built the fan in just 37 days. Called VITAL as the acronym for Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessly Locally, the device uses one-seventh of the number of parts required for a conventional fan. That would facilitate mass production quickly.
NASA administrators said they would offer a free license to help the device enter hospitals faster. That could help emergency response departments prepare for the future influx of patients with COVID-19, which experts hope to see once blockades across the country begin to wear off.
“Intensive care units are serving COVID-19 patients who require highly dynamic ventilators,” said Dr. J.D. Polk, NASA’s medical and health director, in a press release.
“The intention with VITAL is to decrease the likelihood that patients will reach that advanced stage of the disease and require more advanced ventilation assistance.”
A prototype of the ventilator was tested at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, where the school’s Human Simulation Laboratory simulated a variety of patient conditions.
“The tests were exceptional,” said Dave Gallagher, a JPL associate director who worked with the team, in a press call Thursday.
The team has submitted an application for an FDA emergency use authorization, Gallagher said, and expects approval within 48 hours.
Improvised NASA parts to avoid supply chain problems
To avoid disrupting the supply chain for conventional fans, which have already been in short supply, NASA engineers opted for a design that requires fewer parts than a conventional fan and relies on different machines.
“They really are parts of other industries that can be used with this app,” Gallagher said.
The hope is that manufacturers can produce the device without detracting from the production of conventional fans.
“They are not parts that you would normally necessarily use to build a fan,” Polk said in the briefing. “There are about 700 parts that we are not using and that we don’t have to compete with the supply chain.”
Although officials did not offer an exact cost to produce the fan, Gallagher estimated it would be approximately $ 2,000 to $ 3,000. For comparison, General Motors is producing low-cost fans for the national arsenal at more than $ 16,000 each.
Some of the engineers involved in creating the fan prototype. (NASA / JPL-Caltech)
Prevention of fan shortages in the upcoming COVID-19 waves
Although many US cities, counties, and states. USA Seeming to have surpassed the peaks of their first waves of coronavirus cases, experts hope COVID-19 will remain a problem until a vaccine is approved. As local governments loosen restrictions, businesses open, and people begin to mix again, the virus will spread.
Experts say it will bring new waves of infection, which can spiral out of control if not closely monitored and interrupted by additional blockages.
Anywhere where these subsequent waves of infection overwhelm local hospitals could see a shortage of ventilators.
That’s what almost happened in New York City in late March and early April. In Italy, the ventilator shortage has been so severe that doctors have described that they have to decide which patients to prioritize for treatment.
“The only horrible decision I never want to make is who has a respirator and who doesn’t,” Mount Sinai physician Dr. Hooman Poor previously told Business Insider. “That is a horrible situation.”
If NASA’s new device can be produced and widely distributed worldwide, even two big “yess,” it could prevent such a situation from re-emerging.
“It’s a crazy project,” said Michelle Easter, an engineer at the JPL team that designed the fan, in a NASA video. “We have the potential to save human lives, people we might know, our neighbors, our families.”
Yeji Jesse Lee contributed reporting.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
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