By: Dr. Gregory Tangonan (Research Director, AIC)
Hospitals throughout the Philippines are warned of a critical shortage of ventilators. Many provincial hospitals cannot afford expensive models — the sophisticated units that cost $5,000 or more.
To meet these challenges, made especially acute by the CORONAVIRUS, AIC began a series of prototype developments of low cost and medium performance ventilators for rural hospitals and clinics. Wherever possible, Paul’s team has used local components (valves, stainless steel plumbing, microcontrollers, compressors, charge controllers) without compromising performance while keeping the cost down.
In this video, AIC’s Lead Research Engineer, Paul Cabacungan, describes the latest ventilator operation – this is getting closer to a usable prototype with several built in safeguards (valves, meters, controllers, battery backup) already operational. Almost all of this has been developed ‘at home’ by Paul and his son, Daniel. This ventilator prototype will become a platform for collaboration with doctors from various hospitals. Collaboration physicians will provide feedback and list new design requirements for an Advanced Engineering device the doctors will consider for actual trials.
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