Smallest ventilator developed

New Delhi: The smallest ventilator, which looks like a clunky cellphone and can easily slip into your back pocket, has been developed by a young robotics engineer in Delhi in collaboration with a neurosurgeon at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The ventilator named "Aqua" can be a breakthrough in the healthcare sector.

"It is almost 450 times smaller than the conventional ventilators and can be moved around easily," said the 25-year-old inventor Diwakar Vaish, earlier. He developed it with Dr Deepak Agrawal, professor of neuroscience at AIIMS. Dr Agrawal has seen scores of such patients living in hospital because the family cannot afford to buy a portable ventilator.

Expert said that it took one year to build it. It occupies quite economical and less space. It works exactly the same way that the current advanced ventilator does. Dr Agarwal gave this information in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the two-day Joint Leadership Conclave 2018 which was attended by IIT engineers and doctors of AIIMS. He told that his name has been named Agua. It can also be applied in an ambulance.

Experts said that patients suffering from head injuries, spine injuries, lungs, accident cases, hospital patients need a long time ventilator. In such a situation the patient is not removed from the ventilator. Occasionally householders also have problems in the hospital. Now the patient can use this new ventilator at his home without any technical staff.

"The ventilator that costs around Rs 35, 000, but it has a maximum life of four weeks. This will be a one-time investment and since it runs on room air, and not oxygen, the operational costs are close to zero," said an official from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

"There is no requirement for oxygen cylinders, which cost between Rs 3,000 and Rs 4,000 a day," said official.

Controlled with an android app, the ventilator uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to adjust air supply to the normal breathing pattern of the patient. "It works by pushing the atmospheric air into the lungs of the patients who cannot breathe on their own. The disposable ventilators currently in use also push in air, but they do it at a fixed frequency that does not necessarily match the patient's breathing pattern, which may cause low oxygen saturation. This device synchronises ventilator air support with the normal breathing pattern," said expert said.