NASA is helping the medical community address the shortage of ventilators needed to treat coronavirus patients with a ventilator prototype. Within 37 days, engineers and others at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California created a high-pressure ventilator prototype tailored to the needs of patients with COVID-19 and sent it to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York for testing.
The device, called VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally), is designed to be faster to build and easier to maintain than traditional ventilators, with a fraction of the parts. JPL is now seeking an Emergency Use Authorization for the device from the Food and Drug Administration.
For more about VITAL, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-develops-covid-19-prototype-ventilator-in-37-days
For businesses interested in applying for a free license to build VITAL, visit: https://medeng.jpl.nasa.gov/covid-19/ventilator/
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech