WEB DESK, July 1(ABC): UK scientists have been awarded funding to develop a robust, low-cost ventilator to help patients in low and middle-income countries suffering from severe respiratory problems due to Covid-19.
Mechanical ventilation is a small but important part of the management of pandemic virus infections that affect the lungs, including SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), and influenza.
Ventilators are typically expensive to purchase and maintain, and need considerable training to use. Most also rely on the provision of high-flow oxygen and medically pure compressed air, which are not readily available in many countries around the world.
Affordable, reliable and easy to use
A team of researchers, co-ordinated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Daresbury Laboratory, aim to produce and test plans for the creation of an affordable, reliable, and easy-to-operate ventilator that does not rely so heavily on compressed gases and mains electricity supply.
It is anticipated that these plans will be used by a wide variety of manufacturing groups across the world, thereby reducing the need for expensive transportation and maintenance.
The Head of the Technology Department at STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory, Ian Lazarus, is the project lead. He said: “I am proud to be leading this team, in which we have brought together experts from medicine, science, engineering and knowledge transfer with a shared goal to make resilient high quality ventilators available in areas of the world which currently don’t have enough of them.
“We look forward to redeploying skills that normally underpin science research into this different and very necessary field, working with medical experts in both UK and Brazil. Together we hope to make a positive impact in the current fight against COVID-19 and afterwards in the treatment of other respiratory conditions in countries where ventilators are not as readily available as they are here in the UK.”
International expertise
As well as leadership from Daresbury Lab, teams across STFC will be working on this project, from the Technology Department, the Hartree Centre, ISIS Neutron and Muon Source and the Business and Innovation Department (BID).
STFC will also be working with international partners from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and CERN, as well as the University of Birmingham, the University of Liverpool and the Medical Devices Testing and Evaluation Centre (MDTEC).
The £760,000 funding for the prototypes has been awarded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), which looks to support scientists to develop solutions to mitigate the short and long-term social, economic and health impacts of the pandemic.
Real-world applications
This project, known as HPLV (High Performance Low Cost Ventilator), builds on the original designs for the HEV (High Energy physics Ventilator).
The HEV was developed at CERN by a group of institutes from the LHCb collaboration, with guidance from local hospitals, an international team of medical experts and organizations such as the World Health Organisation. Professor Themis Bowcock, of the University of Liverpool instigated the train of events leading to HEV and HPLV. He is part of the LHCb experiment team at CERN and the original HEV team, as well as a member of the ‘CERN against Covid’ committee and the WHO Expert Respiratory Panel.
He said, “It is of enormous importance to us that the technology and software techniques we developed for fundamental physics at the Large Hadron Collider will be used to support the international community in the Covid-19 era. This shows that expertise of researchers across the whole UKRI portfolio play a part in tackling urgent and acute challenges faced by humanity.”