Kategorie: ‘Medizintechnik’
Ventilator for intensive care in crisis areas
Ventilator for intensive care in emergency areas: humanitarian project of members and partners of the RWTH Aachen
Copyright: AC4health gUG
The corona pandemic poses enormous challenges for medical care even in highly developed countries. Catastrophic conditions are looming in developing countries. Against this background, employees, colleagues, and alumni of the RWTH Aachen University around Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. med. Steffen Leonhardt have come together to develop a ventilator that is medically suitable for ventilating COVID-19 patients in intensive care units over several weeks. Thus, this initiative complements the numerous other projects and devices aimed at short-term emergency care, e.g. on the way to the hospital. The PV1000 device is being developed in cooperation with intensive care physicians at the Aachen University Hospital, taking into account aspects relevant to approval. To finance and manufacture the devices, which are to be made available free of charge to hospitals in emergency areas, the non-profit association AC4Health was founded, which will accept donations, components, and cooperation offers with immediate effect.
The disease COVID-19 leads to various supply shortages around the globe, which motivates more and more people to alleviate the need through voluntary work. Thus, five weeks ago, around the experienced developers of respiratory equipment, Professor Steffen Leonhardt and Dr. Marian Walter, not only numerous employees of their own chair for medical information technology (MedIT), but also of the chair for computer science 11, the chair for medical technology (mediTEC), the institute for motor vehicles (ika) and the business fka GmbH gathered. They all share the goal of making a life-saving contribution to mastering this global medical challenge by developing and manufacturing a ventilator for intensive care medicine.
The Institute of Plastics Processing (IKV) is also involved in the production of complex components, and the Institute for Fluid Power Systems and Controls (IfAS) provides advice. Furthermore, the Clinic for Operative Intensive Medicine and Intermediate Care (OIM) is involved with regard to medical usability and testing. Operationally, the companies Mindmotiv GmbH supports Mindmotiv in testing and SurgiTAIX AG in quality management to ensure the highest possible degree of maturity of the ventilator.
The intensive voluntary work, also on weekends, has paid off: at least one technical solution variant has been developed and tested for all relevant components of the PV1000 ventilator, so that the overall concept is now being defined, taking into account the availability of critical components. The project has now entered the operational phase, as the specification has been finalized, components procured and the actual device can be designed and built. For this purpose, the company AC4health gUG was founded last Thursday, which fulfills the strict criteria of a non-profit organization to enable the realization of the device on the basis of donations and grants. In the first step, 1,000 devices are to be built and shipped to affected regions with political or private support.
Further information on this humanitarian project can be found on the product website of the PV1000
Mr. Hoog Antink, PhD. is the new member of Junges Kolleg NRW
Dr.-Ing. Christoph Hoog Antink began studying electrical engineering and information technology at RWTH Aachen University in 2005. In 2018, he received his doctorate as Dr.-Ing. at the Chair of Medical Information Technology and has since then been head of the Medical Signal Processing group as a senior engineer.
As one of 7 new scholarship holders of the Junges Kolleg, he will receive an annual grant of 10,000 Euro for a period of four years. Furthermore, he participates in the life of the Academy, which enables him to discuss his projects in interdisciplinary working groups and to exchange ideas with renowned members of the Academy. In order to be appointed to the Junges Kolleg, scientists and scholars of all disciplines and artists must have already made outstanding scientific achievements in addition to their doctorate and not yet hold a permanent university teaching position. Furthermore, members must not be older than 36 years at the time of admission.
Dr. Hoog Antink has described his field of research and his intentions as follows:
“I am researching signal and data processing in medical technology. I use a wide variety of signal sources, from one-dimensional modalities such as ECG and blood pressure curves to multidimensional video data. I am interested in how robustness can be increased by intelligently combining information from different sources. In practice, sensor fusion can be used to reduce false alarms in intensive care units. Another field of research is the development of contactless measurement technology. Contactless measurement data are often more susceptible to interference and offer special optimization potential through sensor fusion. Vital parameters can be determined contactless using several cameras, whose data are analyzed using current machine learning methods. Here I use cooperation with neonatology and geriatric medicine to increase comfort and freedom of movement for both patient groups and to minimize skin damage and the risk of infection”.
