Open Ventilator
System Initiative

Through our Sustainable Innovation initiative, our Department works alongside the Centre for Global Equality, which looks to apply Cambridge expertise in settings where it can improve the lives of those living under $4 a day.

Working directly with medics, researchers and manufacturers based in some of the target countries, and facilitated by the Centre for Global Equality, the OVSI project team, comprising staff and students from across the University, have developed a prototype ventilator and complimentary oxygen concentrator that can be produced for a fraction of the cost of current ventilator models.

“It all started on a mailing list at college involving scientists and engineers discussing how to positively impact this crisis,” explains Professor Axel Zeitler, Deputy Head of Research in our Department and project coordinator for OVSI.

“We briefly explored what it would take to design such a ventilator and within days a team of engineers from the University and companies around Cambridge got started at the Whittle Laboratory to develop these ideas into a design and a working prototype.”

The design went through further iterations and a second prototype of the ventilator was produced within a fortnight. It passed the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency test specifications for emergency ventilators and was extensively tested at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington.

A team of 20 engineers at the Banbury-based motorsport and advanced technology business, Prodrive, then took the Whittle Laboratory’s initial concept and began rapidly evolving the design into parts that could be manufactured from medically appropriate materials in the high production volumes that would be required.

The importance of co-creation

In parallel, the second Whittle prototype was shipped to Defy, a domestic appliance manufacturing subsidiary of Beko, based in South Africa, to adapt the design to local supply chains and develop a production line for the unit.

The OVSI team is now working towards securing regulatory approval for the device prior to volume manufacture, which will be led by two South African companies, Defy, and Denel, a state-owned business.

“The inclusive innovation approach focuses strongly on co-creating solutions with partners in end-user communities in order to ensure that what is produced is genuinely needed, and is context appropriate,” explains Dr Lara Allen, CEO of the Centre for Global Equality. “We are working closely with engineers and medics in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia to ensure that what is designed is really fit for purpose in those countries."

One of the key challenges faced in many hospitals in developing countries is the lack of supporting infrastructure for ventilators, particularly oxygen and reliable electricity. To this end, OVSI is developing a ventilator system rather than just a ventilator on its own. Collaborative work with medics and engineers based in the target countries is essential for providing this sort of insight that ensures a project aimed at low- and middle-income countries can actually achieve real impact.

"The way in which the Cambridge oxygen concentrator team is working with colleagues at the University of Nairobi is a particularly exciting example of effective cocreation," explains Allen.

The oxygen concentrator can take oxygen from normal atmospheric air, concentrating it to a suitable level for the ventilator in situations where pressurised piped or bottled oxygen is unavailable.

The concentrator team in Cambridge is led by Dr David Fairen-Jimenez, head of our Adsorption and Advanced Materials Group, together with Dr Ewa Marek, who co-leads our Combustion Group. They are working with partners in Ethiopia and Kenya to ensure any designs they develop are compatible with the infrastructure and components in the target countries.

Optimising materials

Professor Geoff Moggridge and his Structured Materials Group in our Department, are also playing a crucial role in this highly collaborative project.

His team is working with the team of engineers in the Whittle Lab, led by long-term collaborator, Dr James Taylor, to design and test critical parts of the ventilator design for injection moulding. It's important that the team carry out quality control tests on the parts, checking that they are satisfactory before they go to large-scale manufacture in South Africa.

The designs and tools will enable the team in South Africa to manufacture ventilator parts there. “Up to this point, plastic parts for the prototypes have been produced by 3D printing, but we now need to produce large scale by injection moulding,” says Professor Moggridge.

His group recently injection-moulded 52 parts for the ventilator project in his lab at CEB, which marked the first experimental work in the department since the shut-down. The parts involved are flowmeters, two of which are required per ventilator, one for oxygen, the other for air. The aim is to produce a robust and inexpensive device for less developed economies. The flow-meters are critical parts of the whole device and precision and reproducibility of manufacture are essential. The flowmeters will be tested and calibrated in the Whittle Lab before being shipped to South Africa.

“The entire injection process for the flow meters, from design to production, was completed in just 10 days: with the conceptual design already done by James Taylor, Marta Serrani produced a full CAD design for the part and the mould required to produce it," says Moggridge. "James and PhD student Ruhi Patel, manufactured the mould from aluminium on the 5 axis milling machines in the Whittle lab. 25 kg of polymer was delivered to my doorstep, as no department was receiving deliveries at that point. Injection moulding then commenced, carried out by Joanna Stasiak and Ruhi. Finally, once appropriate processing parameters were established, the 52 parts were actually moulded in two days".

The injection moulding expertise of Moggridge's group comes from their usual research focus, designing polymeric prosthetic heart valves to revolutionise heart valve replacement surgery. From this work, they also have ample experience working with medical devices and finding a route for authorisation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to bring a medical device to market.