The Smith College team from Massachusetts have been named the winners of the CoVent-19 Challenge for designing a new ventilator for the developing world.
The challenge was started by a dozen anaesthesiology resident physicians from Massachusetts General Hospital on 1st April 2020. The goal was to design a rapidly deployable, minimum viable ventilator that could address shortages caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in developing countries. More than 200 submissions were received in just three months.
The eventual winners, a team of engineering alumnae, staff and faculty from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, took a winning design from concept to working prototype. The next step could be be a final product for regulatory approval in Nigeria - one of the countries that have been talking with the CoVent-19 Challenge organisers.
The Smith College team consisted of 30 people, and the SmithVent design, which is one-tenth the cost of traditional ventilators, aims to combine economical proportional solenoid valve technology with an air-oxygen mixing chamber to meet the full set of requirements for Covid-19 ventilation. The team relied primarily on readily available, off-the-shelf components, which reduced custom machining and improved compatibility with other medical equipment. The enclosure, ISO fittings, and mounting blocks can be produced using FDM or stereolithography 3D printers. The design is open source for anyone to use and improve.
Smith College Engineering professor Susannah Howe commented: “In two months, we went from knowing nothing to having a functional prototype. That’s just crazy. To see that trajectory in such a short period of time, with people who are volunteering their time on top of their other jobs is amazing and heart-warming and so rewarding.”
InVent Pneumatic Ventilator, which was submitted by a San Francisco-based team received second place, and RespiraWorks, which was developed by a global team of dozens of engineers, healthcare workers, and other professionals focusing on developing countries and low-resource communities was named in third place.
Dr. Richard Boyer, founder and director of the CoVent-19 Challenge, explained how when they began planning in March, it was unclear if there would be enough ventilators even in the United States to treat pandemic patients. He said: “Our focus has since shifted to developing countries, where we’re seeing high death rates and limited resources to deal with the ravages of this new disease.”
He added: “The test bed we developed gives us a lot of confidence in the performance of the winning prototype, and frankly there is probably tremendous value in getting other finalist designs out into the world too.”
The three winners will receive a total of $10,000 in credits for 3D printing from Stratasys, which also provided access to free 3D printing and a team of three application engineers for the seven finalist teams building their working prototypes.
The challenge was hosted on the Stratasys GrabCAD community, and other sponsors included Ximedica, Valispace, HackFund, and Yelling Mule.