Title
: BD-VENT: A Low-Cost Automated Mechanical Ventilator Incorporating Specific Needs in Bangladesh Context
Description
: In its 49-year existence, Bangladesh and her people have shown tremendous resilience in fending off disasters. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, is a crisis of a completely different magnitude and one that is demanding a response of unprecedented scale.1 Bangladesh's healthcare system needs to cope with the outbreak of fatal Coronavirus along with its subsequent consequences, especially for the affected patients. Ventilators – mechanical breathing devices – are necessary for the fight to save the affected patients whose lungs have been struck by Covid-19.2
However, the country has only a handful number of ventilators dedicated to treating critical Coronavirus patients.3 Here, the silver lining is that not only the administration but also private manufacturers are leaning their step forward with a view to getting themselves prepared for the production of mechanical ventilators. The main focus in this regard is on low-cost mechanical ventilators to help the population by providing them solutions in the time of need. In doing so, there arise several key issues in the road to designing and development of a ventilator solution being aligned with the requirements of the medical health professionals, who are the ultimate front-line operators of the ventilators. The issues in such designs and development in the context of Bangladesh are as follows.4
I) How far the existing low-cost mechanical ventilators exhibit a decent safety factor, reliability, and ease of installation and maintenance? Are the existing mechanical ventilators, being low-cost, adequate with respect to their degree of proper functionality in the context of Bangladesh?
II) If not, what are the remaining sophistications the end product should come up with within a budgeted amount to be consistent with the requirements of the medical health professionals in Bangladesh?
III) How much man-machine interfacing needs to be presented in the proposed solution in order to operate the machine for assisting the medical health professionals in Bangladesh?
IV) Are all these consistent with local availability of raw parts and technical expertise to enable local productions?
With a view to coming up with a practical solution that can satisfy all of the above-mentioned issues regarding the need of the time, we the team "BD-Vent" under the supervision of A. B. M. Alim Al Islam (web: https://sites.google.com/site/abmalimalislam/home), Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), BUET, and on consultation with EagleX (web: http://theeaglex.ca/) come up with a new proposed low-cost (estimated equipment pricing is only 28K BDT) solution in this project. Our solution includes essential functionality, gas conditioning, different options of mode selections, control systems, and regulations of a sophisticated high-end mechanical ventilator as per local needs while possessing the low-cost nature.
Our designed ventilator starts by setting up a required percentage of 02 mixings according to the doctors’ suggestion based on patient severity. It also supports control over different ratios based on the input settings. It presents options for selecting between modes of pressure-triggered spontaneous breathing cycle or time-triggered constant supply breathing cycle control in the absence of a proper response from a patient. By controlling the gas chamber compression, the tidal volume demanded by the expansion cycle can be maintained according to the patient's physiology. Our solution also considers humidification and temperature control of inhaled gas for the ease of the patient before supplying it. For safety purposes, we have proper alarms and notification settings associated with our core system. For continuous monitoring of the patient’s condition, cycle wise flow, pressure, and volume with time variation will be displayed5. We have accommodated all these features into a single solution within estimated equipment costing of 28K BDT, which is substantially less (by one third or more) than the price of a high-end Mechanical ventilator available in the market now.
References:
1. Europeansting, accessed on 22 April, 2020, <https://europeansting.com/2020/04/13/how-bangladeshs-leaders-should-respond-to-the-economic-threats-of-covid-19/>
2. British Broadcasting Media, accessed on 28 April, 2020, <https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52036948>
3. Tawsia Tajmim, The Business Standard, accessed on 22 April, 2020, <https://tbsnews.net/coronavirus-chronicle/covid-19-bangladesh/just-45-ventilators-fight-against-coronavirus-62704?amp>
4. Ianfeng Xie, Zhaohui Tong, Xiangdong Guan, Bin Du, Haibo Qiu, and Arthur S. Slutsky .Critical care crisis and some recommendations during the COVID-19 epidemic in China (2020). Springer Nature
5. Silvio A Ñamendys-Silva (March 05, 2020). Respiratory support for patients with COVID-19 infection. The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
