Grant: Alliance Grants

This project aims to advance a novel, simple ventilator concept from an initial concept through development of a proof-of-concept prototype, to lab-based validation of the design. The main difference between this ventilator design and existing products in the market are that it is to be assembled mostly from off-the-shelf components, has almost no moving parts, and will be extremely low-cost (approximately ten times less expensive than most current ventilator models). The final design will be openly available to enable widespread adoption for manufacturing in case future waves of COVID-19 and/or other respiratory diseases require high levels of hospitalization in intensive care with ventilators. The low cost of the proposed ventilator design should enable adoption of larger numbers of devices and may enable ventilation-supported care in developing nations where traditional ventilator costs are prohibitive. The outcome of the overall project will thus be highly significant for health outcomes in Canada and around the world for dealing with the current and future pandemics.