The engineers, anaesthetists and surgeons are building and testing prototypes that can be manufactured using techniques and tools available in well-equipped university and SME workshops.
Led by Dr Federico Formenti, King’s, and Oxford professors Andrew Farmery, Mark Thompson and Alfonso Castrejon-Pita, have been working to define novel mechanisms of operation that will meet the required specifications for safe and reliable function.
The design exploits off-the-shelf components and is simple enough to mass-produce in two weeks, just in time to meet the predicted surge in Covid-19 patients.
"Recreating established prototypes is likely to be a faster way to deal with the immediate demand," Dr Marion Hersh, senior lecturer in biomedical engineering at the University of Glasgow, told the BBC. "They may not have to go through all the regulatory hoops, but regulation will still need to be done properly
The researchers are working in response to UK government calls to increase the country’s ventilator manufacturing capacity due to COVID-19. Demonstrating safety and reliability and achieving regulatory approval of the opensource design will be necessary, and once this has been achieved, the approach could unlock potential for a new kind of distributed manufacturing effort.
Government coordination and ongoing rapid competitive selection of the best design concepts will enable universities, SMEs and large industry to make and assemble these ventilators close to their local NHS services. This may allow local scaling according to demand and reduce stress on NHS distribution.
“Thinking beyond the current pandemic, we are also aiming to share the know-how and refinement of this relatively inexpensive approach with other countries,” said Dr Federico Formenti, School of Basic and Medical Biosciences, King’s.
Mr Thompson, Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science, commented: “This extraordinary situation demands an extraordinary response and we are pulling all the talents together in an exceptional team combining decades of experience translating research into the clinic, brilliant innovators, and highly skilled technicians.”
OxVent www.oxvent.org
