Low-cost Medical Ventilator Manufactured by Vega Innovations to Support COVID-19 Outbreak

A new low-cost easily scalable medical ventilator is designed and developed by Vega Innovations, a subsidiary of CodeGen Group of Companies. This is now been tested in Sri Lanka under the supervision of Dr Chandana Karunarathna, Consultant in Anesthesiology, Intensive Care and Pain Medicine at Ministry of Health of Sri Lanka

 

 

 

Why invent a low-cost medical ventilator 

 

As the Coronavirus infected patient count rises daily, engineering teams from around the globe are called to action to build emergency medical ventilators to treat the critically ill patients. Vega team answering to this call and recognizing the urgent need to develop local technology to help save lives, put together a small team to develop a medical ventilator in 10 days.

 

A typical medical ventilator is estimated to cost over USD 30,000 per unit. Currently in Sri Lanka, we as a country in the healthcare system can only help around 300 COVID-19 patients island-wide in one go. We currently have over 200 suspected cases being treated at multiple assigned hospitals with minimum provision of avdanced facilities such as ICU facility  and mobile units for critical emercy services. 

 

Vega’s low-cost solution enables easy deployment and providing this vital facility of using a ventilator to save a life of a COVID-19 patient with minimum cost and rapid manufacturing as it is engineered 100% in Sri Lanka, with 24/7 hardware and software service teams ready to assist in the fight against Coronavirus. 

 

How is Vega’s Low-cost Medical Ventilator Different from Ambu Bag Design 

 

It is believed that hand-operated bag-valve resuscitator or Ambu bag type is the simplest form of medical ventilators that can be used in a situation such as what we are facing today. However, the team of engineering experts, scientists and medical professionals in the front-line tackling the daily challenges faced in Sri Lanka are testing this much-advanced solution developed bottom up to make it as effective as possible to treat patients at a time where the virus outbreak is reaching its peak.  

 

This particular medical ventilator is designed for treating Coronavirus patients in their critical phase, operates in Volume Controlled – Continuous Mandatory Ventilation (VC-CMV) mode. It takes into the account the drawbacks of the more popular Ambu bag-based design and adds vital features needed to revive Coronavirus patients at full-tilt. 

 

The design is also scalable and can be developed locally in any country by implementing the technology and design architecture to be manufactured under USD 650 per unit.

 

 

 

Source : vega.lk