Ventilator

Last crawled date: 1 year, 11 months ago

The COVID-19 pandemic was first confirmed in Sri Lanka on 27th of January 2020, It was the first warning that said the Sri Lanka is also under the risk of prone to covid-19 pandemic. On 16 April 2020, Sri Lanka has been named as 16th high risk country prone to COVID- 19 pandemic. University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJP) forecasted the risk of the existed situation of Sri Lanka and started several researches that can help to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Also at present, University Grants Commission (UGC) and USJP has adjacent interrelation connections in between each other, so the UGC took immediate actions to help for the USJP to conduct the researches.

USJP is a government university that maintained under the taxes of citizens, therefore USJP is not made ready to skip the chance that got to serve for the country like a present state. USJP recognized COVID-19 as a serendipity that came towards the university to avail nation.
As a one of research followed by the Faculty of Technology (FOT), designing a very basic model of a mechanical ventilator was started on the 14th of March 2020. The first model of the suggested ventilator was locally published on 28th of March and it was only capable to operate under Volume Control Mandatory Ventilation mode. It couldn’t be able to operate under none of the spontaneous ventilation modes, after deeply investigating the clinical side of the ventilators, students of the Technology Faculty were realized the importance of operating ventilators under spontaneous modes, because the intend of designing ventilator was portion to medical field to be with COVID patients.

Patients that affected from ARDS have their own breaths, but they need much work of breathing to survive. Therefore the required way of admitting COVID patients under ventilator is settling under spontaneous breathing mode.
Under the admirable supervision of the lecturers in FOT, Students getting started to model new ventilator that can operate under both mandatory and spontaneous breathing modes, as a result of that, the Medulla ventilator is invented. Medulla can operate under,

1) Pressure Control Ventilation
2) Volume Control Ventilation
3) CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure)
4) Pressure Support
5) SIMV + Pressure Control
6) SIMV + Volume Control

Also the Ventilator has capability of working under safety features to prevent barotrauma and it also powered with web based remote controlling system to change parameters of ventilator and monitor the states of patient. Web based remote monitoring system will be really effective for the state like COVID-19 pandemic. Students are working on this project to develop it to further more. The " Medulla" is the second prototype of well functioned ventilator developed by the Faculty of Technology, University of Sri Jayewardenepura to validate the technical feasibility of manufacturing well perform ventilator in Sri Lanka to fight against the COVID-19 global pandemic.