Owais Gul
Srinagar, Jun 2: In a bid to help the downtrodden section of the society, the two friends from Srinagar have come up with a low cost ventilator amid the ongoing second wave of Covid, which led to shortage of oxygen for a longer period as well.
Jahangir Hameed Lone of Buchpora and Sajid Noor Qamarwari, both aged 21, who have affiliations with Department of Electronics and Instrumentation, Kashmir University and Affiliation with Institute of Technology Kashmir University, Zakura Campus, have made a model of ventilator out of scrap material.
“Soon after the Covid second wave led to the shortage of oxygen in Jammu and Kashmir, we tried to share our bit in the situation and thus made a ventilator within two months. The process of manufacturing got delayed as we didn’t get the material on time,” Jahangir said.
He added that the cost of the ventilator will be just Rs 10,000 in the market, which is too low as compared to the existing ventilators, adding that the innovation is different because they have developed it using a different approach and embedded it with the internet of things.
“The system is capable of ventilating patient at a time with the air flow and pressure flow as well the body temperature, heart rate (PPM), humidity. As far as the overall cost of the system is concerned, its cost will be around 10-15 thousand rupees maximum. Our technology is local, cost effective, easy to fabricate and more importantly power efficient. A ventilator device for a single patient currently available in the market costs around Rs 10 to 12 lakh. We have made our innovation cost effective so that even an individual can purchase it at his/her disposal,” he said.
“We know that in Jammu and Kashmir, there are only 100 to 140 ventilators currently in use. This number is very low as far as the intensity of the disease is concerned. This was the motivation behind our effort to come up with such an innovation,” the duo said.
They added the system is designed in such a way that 10-12 inspirations can be made in one minute with the inhalation to exhalation ratio (I/E) as 1:2. “The I/E ratio is programmable and can be programmed using an open-source hardware prototyping platform called as Arduino. We designed this prototype with the intention that it can be used to mitigate the current crisis of covid-19 disease. The device consists of an Ambu Bag which is continuously pushed back and forth with the help of a powerful DC Motor to generate enough air pressure for the patient.”
“The significant part of this innovation is the continuous patient surveillance over cloud. All the important health parameters of the COVID-19 patients are captured using various sensors like ECG, Temperature and humidity. The sensor data is duly processed in accordance with the medical standards and transmitted over a secure internet of things cloud. This sensor data is remotely available to the doctors in both numerical and graphical forms. Thus, without being in actual contact with the COVID-19 infected patients, the doctors can continuously monitor the patients while sitting in his/her room or at home. This system also has an interactive user interface which makes it quite easy to understand the patient’s medical data,” they said.
