15/07/2020
Team Journey from Design to PEC Approval and Mass Production
A joint effort of team PIEAS and POF for Pakistan
It was the day of 21 March, 2020. The Corona pandemic had already found its way to Pakistan. The European countries especially Italy, which have one of the world's best health infrastructure were severely affected & their health system had nearly collapsed. In these critical times, there was shortage of ventilator everywhere around the world. There was great fear and anxiety among the general Pakistani public and people were hopeless from the Pakistani health infrastructure. An estimated 3,000 ventilators were present in Pakistan as of March, 2020, for a population of more than 200 million people.
In these alarming circumstances of global pandemic, a challenging initiative was taken by some students of Pakistan institute of Engineering And Applied Sciences (PIEAS) to work for the design & manufacturing of local ventilators in Pakistan and contribute their efforts in saving the lives of people. A diverse team of mechanical, electrical and software engineers emerged as CorVent Pakistan and started working on the design of indigenous ventilator. The doctors with ICU experience were incorporated in the team to take all the necessary guidance and information regarding the patients’ needs and safeties. At that time, there were no official guidelines in Pakistan for ventilator development. To ensure safety and quality, team CorVent decided to develope an indigenous design following UK government's guidelines for rapidly manufactured ventilators. The design of a complex control and safety critical device of ventilator was a really challenging task. But the challenge was not bigger than passion of team CORVENT. The team worked day and night with the resolve to serve humanity in the times of need. In a time span of 15 days, the team developed the design of an indigenous piston cylinder ventilator.
After design completion, the team needed manufacturing facility. For this, social media platforms were used to reach people with manufacturing facilities and working space. In just a single post, the team were approached by 6 different industries of Pakistan including Pakistan Ordnance Factories. Team CorVent joined Pakistan Ordinance Factories, Wah Cantt which provided the team with all the support for the completion of prototype.
In just a time span of 35 days, the manufacturing of state of the art ventilator was completed with one mode and presented at COMSTECH, Islamabad in a national exhibition on “Innovative Products in Fight against the Covid-19”. Within next few days, the design was presented to the evaluation team at Pakistan Engineering Counsel, Islamabad on 15 May with three modes. The design was appreciated and further recommendations were provided to follow PEC standards.
The work was started on other modes of ventilation and other parameters like safety, reliability & alarms were improved drastically. In just one month, the ventilator was completed with 8 modes of ventilation including PC-CMU, VC-CMV, PC-AC, VC-AC , PC-SIMV, VC-SIMV, PRVC and Pressure Support. This complete design was presented to Pakistan Engineering Counsel on 4th July. The design was approved with a lot of appreciation and approval for the next stage of industrial grade production was granted. The industrial grade design is under progress and will be presented to Pakistan Engineering Counsel on 27 July.
Another achievement along with the design of ventilator is the development of a dedicated CorVent lab at Pakistan Ordnance Factories where all the procedures for mass production have been completed by the Corvent team and procurement of necessary components of 50 ventilators has been completed. Soon with the approval of industrial grade design, the mass production will be started which will be a major stepping stone in making Pakistan self sufficient in medical equipment.
