BUDAPEST, Feb. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A world first, a
mass ventilator developed in months at a Hungarian university can
keep up to 50 people alive at once, compared to the traditional one
machine, one patient model. The Mass-ventil prototype's
manufacturing time and costs can be reduced to a
fraction thanks to 3D printing, bringing a potential global
breakthrough in healthcare as rapid prototype development and
component manufacture make the difference between life and
death.
Not long ago, no one foresaw hospitals suffering machine
shortages, or the availability of ventilators becoming a matter of
life or death. However, with the COVID-19 outbreak last year, this
menacing scenario became a reality. Witnessing the pandemic, a team
at Óbuda University in Budapest
began developing a prototype for a modular mass ventilator system
able to ventilate 50 or more coronavirus patients simultaneously.
Using several appliances, hundreds of people can be ventilated at
once in extreme emergency situations.
Medical technological components created with a 3D printer:
cheap, quick, on site
"With 3D printers we reached the prototype phase quicker and at
a lower cost than planned, printing, installing and testing within
a couple of hours. The licensing process is still underway, but the
tests are encouraging," says Miklós Kozlovszky, dean of the
university's János Neumann Faculty of Informatics, who leads the
development team. R&D local manufacturing, where each component
is produced immediately on site, offers huge cost reductions in
development of medical technological tools. The cost of producing
components is cut from thousands to hundreds of euros with 3D
printing. Amid the COVID pandemic, the MassVentil ventilator can
protect healthcare workers from airborne viruses in hospitals,
ad-hoc camps and emergency hospitals with rapidly deployable,
advanced screening equipment. University experts worked on the
development with the support of CraftBot.
10,000 COVID face shields with a Hungarian 3D printer:
protecting Hungarian, German, British and Canadian doctors
MassVentil was not the only project to employ 3D printing
technology – or additive manufacturing – to help fight against
COVID-19: numerous companies worldwide introduced 3D printers in
developing ventilators or manufacturing components or protective
equipment. As a 3D printing specialist with offices in Hungary, the U.S., Canada and the U.K., CraftBot joined the fight
in developing MassVentil. In Hungary the firm established a Rapid Local
Manufacturing centre, producing face shields for use throughout
Europe.
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