Firm develops low-cost, portable ventilator

Hyderabad: With the country staring at a shortage of critical equipment in the face of the rapidly rising number of Covid-19 positive cases, Aerobiosys Innovations, a startup incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad’s Centre for Healthcare Entrepreneurship (CfHE), has developed a low-cost, portable emergency use ventilator that promises to ease the shortage of life-saving ventilators.

Called Jeevan Lite, the commercial design for the manufacturing of the IoT-enabled ventilator is expected to be delivered by the first week of April

Jeevan Lite, which is the brainchild of Aerobiosys co-founders Rajesh Thangavel and Cyril Antony, would provide isolation to the patient and protection to healthcare providers and family members. It can perform invasive and non-invasive ventilation across a comprehensive set of modes and settings and can be used for pediatric as well as adult patients.

“It provides real-time display of waveforms. Each breath of the patient is recorded and transmitted to doctors via the app to enable telemedicine support. The device has a provision for attaching an oxygen cylinder and can operate on its own in ambient air,” the startup said. The startup is gunning for a production of at least 50 to 70 units per day in collaboration with an industry partner and expects to cater to around 1 lakh patients in the first three months, co-founder Rajesh Thangavel said.