‘Air-Venti’ app helps Mumbaikars to know availability of ICU beds, ventilators

‘Air-Venti’ app helps Mumbaikars to know availability of ICU beds, ventilators

Mumbai: Amid the COVID-19 crisis, citizens of Mumbai can now get information about the availability of intensive care unit (ICU) beds and ventilators in hospitals of the city through a new mobile app, Mayor Kishori Pednekar has said.

It would help people during emergency situations, she said after launching the Air-Venti app on Wednesday. The Air-Venti app was developed by Octaware Technologies in partnership with Probity Soft for Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.

“The app would help citizens in the finding of the availability of ICU beds and ventilators in Mumbai hospitals,” Pednekar told reporters.

“The app is connected to the dashboard of the city’s disaster control room and its link can also be accessed through the Mumbai civic body’s app,” she said.

“The Air-Venti app can be downloaded through the Google Play Store,” she added.

Till Wednesday, Mumbai reported 61,501 COVID-19 cases and 3,242 deaths due to the disease.

Three Indian companies get licence to manufacture NASA’s coronavirus ventilators

Three Indian companies get licence to manufacture NASA’s coronavirus ventilators

Washington:  Three Indian companies have got licences from NASA to manufacture its indigenously developed ventilators for critical COVID-19 patients.

The three Indian companies are Alpha Design Technologies Pvt Ltd, Bharat Forge Ltd and Medha Servo Drives Pvt Ltd, the space organisation said in a statement on Friday.

Apart from the Indian firms, 18 other companies, including eight American and three Brazilian, have been selected to manufacture the critical breathing devices.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which is an independent agency for space research, aeronautics and related programmes in the US, developed the ventilator specifically for coronavirus patients at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JLP) in Southern California.

The JPL engineers designed the special ventilator called VITAL in little over a month and received ‘Emergency Use Authorization’ from the Food and Drug Administration on April 30.

The VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally) equipment uses one-seventh the parts of a traditional ventilator, relying on parts already available in supply chains, the space organisation said. This high-pressure ventilator offers a simple, affordable option for treating critical patients while freeing up traditional ventilators for those with the most severe COVID-19 symptoms. Its flexible design means it also can be modified for use in field hospitals, the NASA statement read.

“The VITAL team is very excited to see their technology licenced,” said Leon Alkalai, manager of the JPL Office of Strategic Partnerships. Our hope is to have this technology reach across the world and provide an additional source of solutions to deal with the on-going COVID-19 crisis,” he said.

NASA said VITAL was developed with input from doctors and medical device manufacturers.

Scientists develop new, safer way to share ventilators for Covid-19 patients

Scientists develop new, safer way to share ventilators for Covid-19 patients

Scientists have come up with a new approach to sharing ventilators between Covid-19 patients. The researchers, including Indian origin Shriya Srinivasan from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) believe this could be used as a last resort to treat Covid-19 patients in acute respiratory distress.

It involves splitting air tubes into multiple branches so that two or more patients can be connected to the same machine.

Several physicians’ associations have issued a joint statement discouraging this practice as it  poses risk to patients, because of the difficulty in ensuring that each patient is receiving the right amount of air.

However, A team of researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital has now come up with a new approach to splitting ventilators, which they believe could address many of these safety concerns. They have demonstrated its effectiveness in laboratory tests, but they still caution it should be used only as a last resort during an emergency, when a patient’s life is at stake.

Giovanni Traverso, an MIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital said, “We recognize that ventilator sharing is not the standard of care, and interventions like this one would only be recommended as a last recourse.”