Development Activities
The US Department of Health & Human Services has identified the need for a “Next Generation Portable Ventilator” to prepare for mass casualty events in America. The term “mass casualty” covers all potential CBRN disasters (Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear). With the recognition that respiratory failure has a high mortality rate without ventilator support, the US HHS-BARDA initiative specifies a portable ventilator that can operate under adverse conditions and be used by operators with little or no training.
The HHS/ASPR/BARDA/ Influenza Emerging Diseases Division (IEDD) specifically recognizes a need for such ventilators to manage an expected overwhelming number of respiratory compromised patients during an influenza pandemic. Because a large number of the U.S. population is expected to become ill during a pandemic influenza outbreak, the health care system will rapidly be overwhelmed and patient care may be provided by inexperienced care providers with limited or no respiratory support training. In addition, the mass numbers of respiratory compromised patients will be out of proportion to the numbers of ventilators and accessory components available. In order to assure needed respiratory support for large numbers of severely ill patients, it is incumbent that the Government looks for ways to solve the problem. The most prudent ways to address the need is to encourage development of a less costly and more intuitive ventilator that can be safely used by inexperienced care providers with limited or no respiratory support training, and to increase the available numbers of portable ventilators that are fully kitted to avoid incompatibility issues between separate medical devices in the clinical setting.