In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the necessary equipment medical is the ventilator. many Government and non-Government bodies around the world are making ventilators suitable for Coronavirus patients. Only recently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has developed a ventilator specifically designed for COVID patients. The design was made at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JLP) in Southern California. NASA has granted licences to three Indian companies-Alpha Design Technologies Pvt Ltd, Bharat Forge Ltd, and Medha Servo Drives Pvt Ltd, to manufacture its ventilators for patients whose condition is bad; this was revealed in a statement on Friday.
Other than these three Indian companies, 18 others have been permitted to manufacture the ventilators. These include eight
American and three Brazilian firms. They named it ‘VITAL’ (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally), which was developed in a month and a few days by the JPL engineers. It has received ‘Emergency Use Authorization’ from the Food and Drug Administration on 30
April.
They said that VITAL can be built with only one-seventh the parts used by a traditional ventilator. And all the parts used in it
are already available in supply chains. In a statement, NASA said that this high-pressure ventilator provides a simple and low-cost option for treating Coronavirus patients. Implied, the traditional ventilators can thus be used for the most severe patients. Also, the VITAL’s flexible design makes it a good choice in field hospitals.
“VITAL performed well in simulation testing with both precise and reproducible results,” said Dr Tisha Wang, clinical chief of
the UCLA Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. VITAL has been a quick and effective alternative to the present
necessity. “The VITAL team is very excited to see their technology licenced,” said Leon Alkalai, manager of the JPL Office of Strategic Partnerships.
