Cambridge University wants to save Africa by building a ventilator that costs less than $1,000.

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Today, I'm not sure if this hot topic on Weibo has caught your attention -- #Cambridge University has developed a cheap respirator. According to project leader Axel Zeitler, a professor at the University of Cambridge's School of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, the team has completed the development of a "cheap" open-source ventilator that allows the user to adjust the parameters according to their needs.

The advantage of OVSI is that it reduces the complexity of the components used, making it easy to obtain parts from countries with existing supply chains that can deliver. And the entire machine costs just under $1,000, one-tenth the cost of a traditional medical ventilator.

Click on this thread and you can see the praise. After all, the spread of the epidemic under the continuing shortage of respirators has been a concern for a long time,

However, there are also netizens questioned, this is not a home respirator for snoring? The "cheap" can have good goods?

Cheap not castrated

In fact, although cheap, but OVSI is really a respirator can be clinical medical.

First of all, from the outside, the OVSI isn't what we'd expect to find gently and coquettishly. The official dimensions show that its length, width and height are 50cm, 40cm and 20cm respectively, which makes the machine slightly larger than a 20-inch suitcase.

Folded up like a boarding pass

And in terms of weight, while home ventilators tend to be around 2kg, the OVSI is nearly 20kg, which is very solid, and heavier than some models of traditional ventilators.

Additionally, while we have no way of knowing the exact design drawings, the OVSI has not neutered the ventilator's functionality at all, judging by its proven working modes.

We don't need to know what the three modes are, just what the OVSI can do with each of them. The official website shows that the OVSI can meet all of a patient's respiratory needs from the point where he or she is still conscious but needs assisted respiration because of lowered oxygen levels to the point where he or she is unconscious and completely dependent on the machine for respiration.

If it's so strong, how does the OVSI keep costs low?

To put it simply, it's actually the number of internal components that the Cambridge team controlled. It's easy to see that the OVSI has far fewer components than Medtronic's PB560 ventilator, whose design has been publicly available.

The OVSI construction is actually still all parts

Medtronic's PB560 ventilator design is much more complex

The open-source ventilator project, which was launched by the University of Cambridge in March this year, has attracted a ****total of 60 clinicians, engineers, and manufacturers from across the U.K. and Africa to join in the project, with multiple pairs of eyes watching over the R&D, design, manufacturing, and assembly of each component. eyes on every aspect of development, design, manufacture and assembly. It's also a team effort to guarantee performance.

The team also prioritizes the current availability of the same components, which on the one hand facilitates rapid mass production, and on the other hand is relatively inexpensive.

At present, the OVSI has not yet been approved for marketing by the UK's MHRA. But the team is currently working on further iterations of the product prototype, and the latest version has passed the MHRA test specification.

Lifespan may be limited

The only concern is that the OVSI may not have a long lifespan.

Previously, a doctor told HuffPost that the minimum lifespan of an imported ventilator is usually 5 years, and 10 years of actual use is not a problem.

And to ensure the life of a ventilator, outside of tests such as clinical safety, manufacturers also value the durability of the machine. Wei Ximeng, CEO of Beifeng Technology, told HuffPost that in 2018, the micro turbine fan developed by the company was selected as part of the "spare tire list" of the components of the Merry, but it also had to go through a long period of continuous work testing and verification, not to mention the assembled ventilator machine.

And the OVSI project from March to the present, but also more than a month's time, even if the clinical use of the test passes, but whether the life of the test will stand up to the test of the observation needs to be more long.

Similar to the OVSI, NASA's latest high-pressure ventilator, the VITAL, which is specifically designed to treat patients with new crowns, also consists of fewer parts, and the existing supply chain can meet the demand for production, as well as make it easier to manufacture and maintain than traditional ventilators.

NASA's R&D team with their VITAL

The difference is that NASA's 37-day effort to build the VITAL was not intended to replace traditional ventilators, but only to serve as an emergency response device in this outbreak. And the VITAL has a lifespan of only three to four months.

"ICUs are busy with newly crowned patients who need high-end ventilators," said Dr. J.D. Polk, NASA's chief health and medical officer, adding that "the purpose of the VITAL is to reduce the likelihood that a patient will be in the advanced stages of the disease."

In other words, NASA jettisoned durability as a performance given the rapid spread of the epidemic. And that must correlate with the fact that it has fewer parts.

This adds to the concern that the OVSI can really do the job of replacing medical ventilators?

Of course, even if it only solves an immediate need, these scientists' innovations are rare and useful.

Africa in May to 'save' the next 'epicenter'

However, Axel Zeitler's team is realizing its original vision one step at a time.

"We noticed reports that there is a severe shortage of ventilators on the continent, with some countries reportedly having only a few dozen of these devices, and some none at all. Ventilators are too expensive and we need low-cost solutions." Interviewed by the media, Axel Zeitler on the other end of the camera mentioned the original reason for designing the OVSI.

Dengue, Ebola, Malaria, CholeraMention Africa, and apart from its natural beauty, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the name of an infectious disease.

In fact, excluding a few countries such as South Africa, most of Africa's health situation is extremely poor, and medical conditions can not meet the needs of disease prevention, control and treatment. According to earlier WHO statistics, sub-Saharan Africa faces a huge shortage of health workers, with these regions accounting for 25 percent of the global disease burden, but only 3 percent of the world's health workers.

In the early days of the New Crown outbreak, there were those who wondered why Africa had become a clean slate instead. Today the data tell us it's not that simple. To date, the number of confirmed cases of neocollins on the continent has risen to 27,852, with last week's growth rate reaching a whopping 62.5 percent.

These numbers are clearly underreported, given the failure of testing capacity to keep up.

A few days ago, the WHO warned that there could be as many as 10 million new confirmed cases of the disease in Africa in three to six months, which could lead to the deaths of more than 300,000 Africans and plunge 30 million people into extreme poverty. One can only imagine how much Africa's limited medical conditions will be tested.

There is a shortage of ventilators for the treatment of patients with moderate to severe new crowns, which is a major problem for developed countries in Europe and the U.S. For most low- and middle-income countries in Africa and elsewhere, they neither have the research and development and production capacity nor the ability to afford the high price of purchasing them.WHO estimates that there are fewer than 2,000 ventilators available in 41 countries in Africa.

The creation of the OVSI is obviously good news for these countries. Approval and production of the ventilator, which costs less than $1,000, is now on the table.

The first batch of OVSIs will reportedly go to Defy, a leading South African home appliance company, and Denel, a state-owned military industrial complex, in May, with production of up to 5,000 units expected after full-scale production in June. Until then, the team will prioritize the start of the U.S. FDA emergency certification and related certification processes in the manufacturer's country.

To learn more about the University of Cambridge's effort to save Africa by building a ventilator that costs less than $1,000, stay tuned to Deep Space's Science & Technology section, which will continue to update you with more science and technology news.

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