Since April 2020, employees, colleagues and alumni of the RWTH Aachen around Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. med. Steffen Leonhardt have been developing a ventilator that is medically suitable for ventilating COVID-19 patients in intensive care units over several weeks. It is intended to serve as a simple and robust device in situations where conventional ventilators are in short supply.
Now the project has reached an important milestone: the so-called “Graphical User Interface” is being tested by ventilation experts throughout Germany, including numerous medical directors of intensive care units. They are testing whether the result really does enable safe operation in intensive care units. The feedback is incorporated into the software as quickly as possible so that the next step – the integration of all individual elements of the PV1000 in a first prototype – can be completed soon.
Ventilators are complex technical systems that support different ventilation modes and must react correctly to many situations. An essential success factor is easy and comprehensible operation by medical personnel. In addition to the Chair for medical information technology (MedIT) , the Chair for medical technology (mediTEC) , another partner from the RWTH, was able to contribute its expertise in the safe and usable development of medical devices. For the PV1000, the operating concept developed by the Chair for computer science 11 – Embedded Software (i11) has now been implemented and the programming completed.
Leave a Reply