FLC | SLAC offers no-fee licenses for new low-cost COVID-19 ventilator

SLAC offers no-fee licenses for new low-cost COVID-19 ventilator

August 5, 2020

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is offering no-cost licenses to industry partners who are interested in producing and distributing its new COVID-19 ventilator.

Over the past three months, SLAC and Stanford University personnel have designed, built and tested a low-cost, easy to manufacture and safe ventilator to help in the fight against COVIDd-19. The lab is now releasing this invention, along with a short video (https://youtu.be/U_JXa47RBuo), a long detailed paper (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.20.20158147v1) and a dedicated website (https://www.slac-asv.net/).

The acute shortage ventilator (ASV) is intended to be the simplest reliable solution to save lives in places that experience a shortage of ventilators during a surge of COVID-19 cases. The team consists of particle physicists, engineers, software and hardware specialists from Stanford University and SLAC National Lab working with healthcare experts from Stanford and the Palo Alto VA hospital.

The researchers extensively tested a prototype ventilator using a top of the line ASL – 5000 lung simulator to make sure it can successfully deliver a broad range of different ventilation settings. They demonstrated that the prototype meets the requirements set by the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Emergency Use Resuscitator System design guidance specifications (AAMI/CR503:2020) for simplified ventilator designs.

The new ventilator is based on existing parts and services found in most hospitals, readily available electronic and mechanical parts, and a few small 3D printed parts that can be provided as a kit. The design uses a bag valve mask that is compressed by a hinged paddle and driven by a pneumatic cylinder, which is controlled by an Arduino microcontroller. The system can run autonomously, although a serialized data stream is available for monitoring the patient pressure and flow. It also comes with a graphical interface for control and monitoring that can run on any Windows computer.

Research was supported by the DOE Office of Science through the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory, a consortium of DOE national laboratories focused on response to COVID-19, with funding provided by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and through Stanford University discretionary funds allocated to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515.