IUST students innovate prototype of low-cost ventilator for COVID19 patients

BK News

Awantipora, April 22: A group of engineering students and innovators from Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) have developed a prototype of a low-cost ventilator.

Amid the COVID19 outbreak, Kashmir is facing a shortage of healthcare equipment, particularly ventilators which are considered very critical for treating the severely ill coronavirus positive patients.  

 The USP of this innovation is the cost factor as this ventilator would be way cheaper as compared to the ones imported from outside, said one of the group members who made the prototype. 

The prototype named ‘Ruhdaar’ is expected to be handed over to the medical experts in the SKIMS for evaluation purpose once the innovators are satisfied with its functioning in the laboratory. The raw materials for the frugal ventilator are easily available within J&K, said the group member. 

Team members who designed and developed the prototype were headed by Coordinator of IUST’s Design and Innovation Centre, Shahkar Nehvi, Majid Hamid Koul, ex faculty IUST, Peerzada Shoaib, Asif Shah, Zulquarnain, Jawad Ahmad from IUST, Saad Parvaiz from NIT Srinagar, Shabir Hassan from Harvard University as an overseas mentor and Abdul Hamid from Rahim Greens. 

While the prototype, is working successfully in the laboratory, it eventually will be assessed by the medical experts who will have to use it. Once the prototype is approved by medical experts, there is 
the possibility of manufacturing it for commercial use, they said. 

Vice-Chancellor of IUST, Prof Mushtaq A Siddiqi, himself an eminent immunologist, according to a statement, has congratulated the entire team for this achievement.

“I am thrilled because our team members have achieved it in a very short span of time. It is our own design and its components are mostly local,” he said. “Once approved, the university will patent it and handover the technology to a startup or a couple of startups so that the ventilator is produced on a large scale.”