OxVent – prototype ventilator

Multidisciplinary team of engineers and medics at the University of Oxford and King’s College London. Leadership: Prof. Andrew Farmery, (consultant anesthetist) Head of the Nuffield Division of Anesthetic.

It’s a compressible bag, the sort used to resuscitate patients who have collapsed from cardiac arrest, similar to ones carried in Ambulances. The bag is enclosed within a rigid Perspex box. Compressed air is injected into the rigid Perspex box that squeezes the bladder and pushes air out through some valves and inflates the patient’s chest. There’s a second set of valves that allows gas to come out of the patient’s chest and also out of the rigid Perspex box. So it’s a sort of electro-pneumatic device. Pressure, breath rates, length of inhalation and exhalation , and volume is controlled with a feedback controller using Arduino – a simple opensource microcontroller. Device awaiting MHRA approval. Manufacturer – Smith+Nephew (Hull, UK).