Coronavirus: IIT Kanpur to develop low-cost portable ventilators to aid medical infrastructure

With number of COVID-19 cases rising in country, Indian Institute of Techlogy (IIT) in Kanpur is developing portable ventilators which will be significantly cheaper than ones available in market.

Professors at IIT Kanpur claim that while invasive ventilators are available at around Rs 4 lakh per unit in market, this ventilator will be me at a cost of Rs 70000 per unit as all components have been sourced from India only.

Two gruates from institute---Nikhil Kurule and Harshit Rathore -- who are running a start up called "cca Robotics" incubated at IIT Kanpur, have developed a proto for portable ventilator.

IIT, Kanpur has formed a nine-member team, including doctors from Narayana Institute of Cardiac Sciences (NICS), Bangalore to vet proto following which start up will get around 1000 portable ventilators rey within a month.

According to team, proto developed is an invasive mechanical ventilator capable of operating in pressure-controlled mode.

ventilator will be permanently connected to a mobile phone which will be used to control device and display critical information. device will t require any form of medical air and will be capable of operating on its own in ambient air. re will also be a provision for attaching oxygen cylinder, when required.

"COVID-19 has hit mankind as a catastrophe. When even sophisticated countries like US and Italy which have wonderful medical infrastructure are dealing with onslaught of this virus, in India we are grossly unprepared," said Amitabha Bandhophay, Professor and Incharge IIT Kanpur Incubation Centre.

"se patients, particularly elderly one will need access to ventilators and we have very few spare ventilators. We are making an effort to make ventilators as fast as possible, possibly within a month's time. Without any manufacturing base for ventilators, it is t going to be easy, refore we have formed a team with technical as well as medical experts," he ded.

team, which is in process of working out costing involved for production of portable ventilators, is also seeking help from crowd sourcing platform called Care In India.

"We are taking help from all levels including a crowd sourcing platform called Care in India. This is time when combined effort is needed and we hope that if our effort bears fruit we can save a lot of Indian lives," Bandhopahyaya said.

number of coronavirus cases climbed to 649 in India on Thursday and death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 13, with one death reported each from Gujarat, Tamil Nu and Mhya Presh, according to Health Ministry.

Goa featured for first time in chart prepared by ministry, reporting three coronavirus cases.