Spirowave

Emergency Bridge Ventilator

As COVID-19 cases surged in NYC in March 2020, a team consisting of engineers and physicians, was formed to expedite the development of a bridge ventilator based on an MIT open-source design. Our goal was to craft a device that was not only straightforward and easy to use but also economical and simple to manufacture in various settings, minimizing parts to circumvent supply chain complications.

One month after the project began, the FDA awarded Spirowave an Emergency Use Authorization. Two months later, we successfully delivered 3,000 fully tested units to NYC.

Company
10XBeta/spirowave

Year
2020

Role
Mechanical engineering Lead

QA/RA support

Fast Company
Innovation by Design Award
General Excellence category
2020


Fast Company
Innovation by Design Award
Health category
2020

Awards

Press

Spirowave is agnostic to different manual resuscitators, and its integration with pressure sensors and an alarm system allows clinicians to monitor and adjust essential respiratory and ventilation parameters such as tidal volume, PEEP, respiratory rate (BPMs), I/E ratio, and airway pressure.

“This is a story about doing the impossible – so it’s a New York story. We’d never made a ventilator before – and so we made thousands. We learned it would take a year – and so we did it in a month. Our City is taking our future into our own hands. That’s how we’ll beat this crisis and prepare for the next.”

—NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio

How might we engineer the compression actuators to ensure functionality—achieving precise respiratory waveforms—and reliability, enabling continuous operation for 7 days using manual resuscitators typically designed for short-term use? Additionally, how can we design these components to be agnostic, straightforward to manufacture and assemble, and mindful of cost and supply chain constraints?