ME Professors Collaborating to Expand Ventilator Capacity

Mechanical Engineering Professors A Zachary Trimble and Scott Miller, in collaboration with Dr. Donald Gaucher and Dr. Russell Woo, have developed an improved system to treat multiple COVID-19 patients using a single ventilator.

Doctors in emergency situations worldwide are already working on ways to treat more than one patient with a single ventilator, however, typical sharing solutions do not provide individualized treatment. The Quad-Split Ventilator System (QSVS) allows patients to receive more individualized care than simply just sharing the ventilator. Up to four patients can receive individualized care for Peak Inspiratory Pressure, Flow Rate, Driving Pressure, Tidal Volume, Positive End Expiratory Pressure, and FiO2. Individualizing multiple elements of the respiratory care will make this system safer and more feasible for use in emergency situations. This system uses clamp valves to control pressure and volume to each patient, one-way valves to manage flow, and manometer pressure relief valves to manage expiratory pressure. By design, the system is extremely simple and can be built with parts readily available at the hospital and local hardware stores, which allows large scale replication anywhere in the world. Sourcing parts for more sophisticated designs was not feasible in Hawaii during the first weeks of the COVID-19 crisis, yet this solution could be replicated with parts on island in quantities that can make a difference if Hawaii were in an emergency situation. The developers are not advocating for this system’s use in anything but an extreme emergency when all other ventilator capacity has been exhausted.