Ventilator that can treat two patients, courtesy IIT Ropar scientists

PATIALA: In a major achievement in fighting the Coronavirus, the IIT Ropar researchers have now come up with low cost and portable ventilators that can be easily and quickly manufactured as per the requirement. These ventilators can provide oxygen to two patients at a time.


Across the country, there is a shortage of ventilators and the recent invention in the times of crisis can prove a boon for the doctors looking for these ventilators to save the Covid19 patients. Coronavirus lockdown: Latest updatesThe researchers have developed this low-cost set-up (ventilators) for automatic compression of Ambu bag used in manual ventilators. They said that the entire setup was completely developed out from scrap and that too in merely two days. In addition to this, the development of indigenous ambu bag is under process. The cost of the complete setup will get drastically reduce when there will be mass production. These low-cost ventilators will be a significant step in a fight against the COVID 19 pandemic.

The research has been carried out by Ph.D research scholars Viney Ghai, Ankit Baranwal and Ajinkya V. Sirsat from Mechanical Engineering and Neha Yadav from the department of Chemistry at IIT Ropar under the guidance of Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering Dr Prabhat K Agnihotri.

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“Amid COVID 19 pandemic, the world is facing a shortage of medical instruments. As COVID19 is a respiratory viral infection, the need of ventilators has increased exponentially. The cost of available high-end ventilators are around Rs 5 to 7 Lacs. Thus, there was a need to develop cheap and easy operated ventilators, especially for rural areas. One such available ventilator is the manual resuscitator, in which a person can press an Ambu bag continuously to supply oxygen to the patient”, said Dr Agnihotri.

To reduce the human efforts and fatigue, the researchers said that the low-cost setup can be used for automatic compression of Ambu bag and hence, an automated resuscitator is developed. The mechanism can simultaneously squeeze two bags which benefit two patients at a time. This setup finds it explicit application in the railway coaches turned into isolation wards considering the space arrangement.

Presently, there are three sizes of Ambu-bags being used in the health sector for adults, paediatrics and infants. To accommodate this requirement, the mechanism is developed in such a way that it can include different sizes of the bags individually depending upon the age and lung capacity of the patient. Also, the two bags attached can work individually with varying compressions to provide different artificial breaths. The setup can be operated at different compression speeds.

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The scientists added that the efforts are underway to add some more functionality to this setup for better management. They said that the total cost of setup including the bags (available in the local market) is Rs 5000 rupees which mean the cost per person is Rs 2500.