While modern day ventilators save patient’s lives, they are expensive and require extensive training for proper use. Not only do settings, such as target air pressure or air volume provided, need to be properly calibrated to each patient, but these settings may change for an individual patient over time. If ventilators are not accurately attuned to the specific patient, a ventilator may actually cause harm to the patient’s lungs.

Two groups of Princeton researchers, led by Daniel Cohen and Elad Hazan, set out to improve these two issues with ventilator use. Daniel Cohen’s group at Princeton, spearheaded by Julienne LaChance, along with Dr. Daniel Notterman, Manuel Schottdorf and Grant Wallace from the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Zhenyu Song, NJ ACTS TL1 Fellow Tom Zajdel and Sophie Dvali, first designed a more cost-effective and rapidly deployable ventilator that can be assembled using build instructions from replaceable “off-the-shelf” parts. Read the full story.