3 minute read
From Spacecrafts to Saving Lives
Aryaman Sharma reports on NASA’s latest innovation; VITAL.
On December 31st, 2019, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. Since then, this dreadful outbreak has not only caused a large number of deaths globally but has also created enormous dearth in medical equipment like masks, gloves, PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) kits and ventilators. However, as it is rightly said, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Numerous multi-national companies have innovated in order to produce more essential medical equipment such as ventilators, despite the subsequent difficulties due to their profound level of specialization and the complexity of the process of building ventilators. Tesla, for example, has retrofitted some car parts from Model 3, while Ford and General Motors have restructured entire assembly lines to manufacture ventilators. Meanwhile, other firms such as Dyson have shifted production from vacuum cleaners to ventilators.
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Justifying the necessity of such innovation, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California designed a working prototype for a high-pressure ventilator in merely 37 days . They submitted the prototype to a renowned medical facility in New York City. Matthew Levin, M.D., director of innovation at the Human Simulation Lab, said, “The NASA prototype performed as expected under a wide variety of simulated patient conditions.”, also giving the prototype the green light on April 31st. Subsequently, the prototype was then given the name, VITAL- (“Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally”).
The VITAL ventilator is a white digital box containing an endotracheal tube (breathing tube) and a comprehensive set of filters and sensors. VITAL lies somewhere between the sophisticated high-end ventilators that critical patients need, and a simple ambulatory bag (also known as a bag valve mask) used to provide patients with pressure ventilation. This ventilator has also been specifically designed for patients with milder symptoms. Hence, it can be built much faster than a traditional ventilator and is comprised of fewer and more plentiful parts like tubing, motors, valves and electronics displays, making it more economical to produce than existing ventilators.
NASA VITAL Team
By devising VITAL in this way, NASA has also helped reserve the nation’s limited supply of traditional ventilators for critical patients, thereby improving the quality of treatment received by those with relatively advanced needs. However, as VITAL ventilators are not meant to permanently replace expensive, sophisticated ventilators that ideally last for at least a couple of years and have numerous other medical uses, they have a lifespan of just about three or four months.
The working mechanism of the VITAL ventilator is quite elementary. As the machine is tailored for COVID-19 patients, it focuses on providing air delicately to stiff lungs, one of the most prominent symptoms of the disease. Patients suffering from COVID-19 also tend to have lung damage that makes the sides of their lungs inflamed and sticky. As it is significantly tougher for stiff lungs to expand, patients struggle to get enough air to breathe. VITAL provides the required boost of air pressure to patients in order to artificially inflate their lungs to the natural extent. The machine also works to keep the lungs slightly inflated whenever the patient exhales, avoiding the added difficulty in the expansion mechanism caused by the whole deflation of the patient’s lungs.
As echoed by the NASA chief, Jim Bridenstine, the remarkable development of this ventilator represents the auxiliary benefits and the increase in technological ability as a result of the country’s dedicated investment into space exploration and research. In addition, it also compellingly demonstrates the power of collaboration and the scope of the success that can be achieved if the species were to unite in ambition and action. Facing a pandemic that has wiped out large proportions of some countries’ populations and left an indelible mark on our social and intellectual progress, this example of innovation and cooperation really does spark hope for the future, regardless of the magnitude of its impact on the dynamics of the pandemic. 19
