Amid rising cases of coronavirus, researchers at Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI), Durgapur in West Bengal, have developed an indigenous ventilator.
The ventilator has undergone multiple technical and design changes after adopting critical feedbacks from healthcare professionals, an official statement said on Wednesday.
This ventilator will cost about Rs 80,000-90,000 and will be further upgraded to meet the requirements of various other patients' parameters.
Harish Hirani, director of the institute, said the bellow design, controllers and embedded electronics of this ventilator have been customised to ensure price efficacy as well as meeting the requirements.
“The efficacy of a ventilator for a patient is also correlated to the effective response of the attending healthcare personnel. The approach of this Institute will be to harness artificial intelligence capabilities to automate the functioning of mechanical ventilators, so that the ventilators automatically respond to the fluctuating variables of a patient”, added Hirani.
“CSIR-CMERI, in coordination with critical care experts of the Health World Hospitals, have studied and incrementally developed this ventilator”, explained Dr Arunangshu Ganguly of Health World Hospitals.
“Since the individual parts of the ventilator can be independently developed by different industries, mass-development of this ventilator will help a broad spectrum of industries,” according to Hirani.
The significantly reduced cost of the ventilators will help the economically marginalised sections of the society as well as help further fortify the government-aided healthcare schemes, he explained.
“We are in conversation with several industries for quick commercialisation of this newly developed ventilator to ensure availability of these ventilators in makeshift hospitals, basic hospitals, and other healthcare facilities.”
This will also help in upgrading the tertiary healthcare infrastructure, he further added.
First Published: Jun 3, 2020 9:50 PM IST
