University of Glasgow team develops “stopgap” COVID-19 ventilator

A low-cost ventilator developed by a team at the University of Glasgow, could help keep seriously ill people alive long enough to either recover or receive hospital care it is claimed.  

The device, called GlasVent, was developed by the University’s Professor Ravinder Dahiya and a team of engineers from his Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (BEST) group.

The team began working on the project in mid-March, during the early stages of the UK’s COVID-19 outbreak, when demand for ventilators was expected to outstrip demand within weeks. Although these fears weren’t realised, the team claims that manufacture of its low cost system could be rapidly scaled to allow basic ventilatory support for large numbers of patients if coronavirus infections peak again, or if other pandemics break out in the future.

The system is effectively an automated version of the bag valve mask, a manually operated balloon like device which is already commonly used in emergency medical situations to deliver air into a patient’s lungs.