Australian team develops, publishes design for low-cost ventilator

According to a statement from the university, the “Ventil-8” device had usefulness in countries where a $25,000 to $50,000 ventilator may not be affordable, and was made from low-cost, readily-available parts.

“Due to the dire need for ventilators in these countries, the designs for the Ventil-8 ventilation assistance device are being made available open-source at GitHub for medical professionals around the world in the hope that it will help them avoid having to make the terrible choice of who gets a ventilator and who doesn’t,” said Dr Thomas Challenger of the university’s school of medicine.

A windscreen wiper motor drives the Ventil-8, and it uses ambu bag hand pumps used for resuscitation. The total cost of the prototype was $600.

“The makeshift ventilator meets the doctors’ needs, with adjustable volume and speed or breaths per minute and three different Inspiratory/Expiratory (I/E) ratios,’’ said Dr Mousa Hadipour, a research fellow at the Institute for Integrated and Intelligent Systems.

Picture: Griffith University