The global Corona virus/COVID-19 pandemic has placed great strain on the world’s heath systems. This can have severe consequences for the function of patient’s lungs, reducing their ability to transport oxygen to and remove carbon dioxide from the blood. An large number of patients therefore require acute and prolonged treatment where the patient’s breathing is supported by a mechanical ventilator. While regional demand for mechanical ventilators varies, prognoses suggest that - at a global level - the need for mechanical ventilators will exceed the number currently available.
This acute, critical situation has come as a shock to many of the world’s health systems. To address this issue, researchers at Aalborg University have, in collaboration with industrial partners, developed an emergency ventilator for use during the COVID-19 crisis. The intention of this work has been to construct, and share, all information describing this development process. In addition and where possible, the ventilator has been built from standard industrial parts not competing with ventilator manufacturers.
While this Github Repository is intended for contributes and manufacturer, the project also has a public site with information for the general public and for Health Care Providers that are in the need of the AAU Pandemic Ventilator.
The team behind this project is a academic research team investigating the application of technology in all matters related to respiration, respiratory medicine and critical care medicine.
The team has a particular focus on the application of physiological models, built into technological solutions, to solve specific clinical questions or address physiological understanding. The team includes both engineers and physiologists aiming to create a multi-disciplinary environment where the solution of clinical and physiological problems is at the fore.
In the process, the team have included relevant industrial partners who have helped to accelerate the software and hardware development and manufacturing prosess.
The design and technical specifications are currently being released in this repository. It is our hope in doing so that all can use this design either directly or as inspiration for development, according to their acute need. In this way the AAU Pandemic Ventilator can be used as a supplement to existing ventilators when those are not available.
The AAU Pandemic Ventilator has previously been approved for use on COVID-19 patients in Denmark in the current crisis situation, according to the approval documentation provided VENT-20-004-DOC Regulatory Dispensation, Rev. 001.
All the material is provided under a permissive license, by downloading, cloning or forking this repository you will be bound by this license and the use of any of the material provided is at your own discretion and legal liability. Following that you will have access to the following material:
- Software design and code for controlling PLCs for regulating the ventilator Software Repository
- Hardware parts list and sketch Reference Implementations
- Our application and approval from the Danish ministry (for inspiration to write your own approval documents). This includes test strategies, user manuals, risk analysis, etc. This is provided in DHF.
PLEASE NOTE: All information will be released as fast as possible but with care to direct you toward that finished and that not. It will however, be necessary to perform your own testing if you are to reproduce this.
We hope you find our releases useful.
Kind regards
The AAU Pandemic Ventilator team