They Won the Challenge to Design a Better Ventilator

Ventilators are a key tool to help seriously sick patients recover from the coronavirus — so the ventilator shortage has been a worldwide concern. Today we hear from Smith College engineers about SmithVent, their winning competition entry. It's designed to be cost-effective, rapidly manufacturable and tailored to Covid-19 patients. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to this episode of Here's Something Good, a production
of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Each day we aspire to bring you the good news,
the silver lining, the glass half full, because there is
good happening in the world everywhere every day. We just
need to look for and share it. Here's something Good

(00:27):
for Today. During the coronavirus, ventilators have become a major
tool in the war against the disease and a cause
for concern. Back in March, New York State estimated that
it would be short of ventilators by almost sixteen thousand
machines a week. The state's grambled to find enough for
the tidal wave of very sick COVID patients. Now, almost

(00:49):
six months into this pandemic, ventilators continue to be an
issue around the world. In April, it was reported that
South Sudan had only four ventilators for its twelve million people.
At one point. The World Economic Forums stated that ventilator
production would have to improve by a thousand percent to
meet needs. That's why a group a massed general hospital

(01:10):
came up with the covent nineteen competition to crowdsource cheaper
and innovative ventilator designs that could be rapidly manufactured and
sent across the world. Two hundred different ventilator designs were submitted,
and the winning team came from a women's college, Smith College.
The Smith team entry featured ventilators that could be made
more efficiently than in traditional production. This victory was one

(01:33):
for Smith but also for women in STEM, showing just
how much we need women in the field today. We
speak with doctor Susannah Howe, director of the Design Clinic
and Senior lecturer in Engineering at Smith College and co
leader of the winning team, and Astrid Landau and engineering
alumna from Smith and co lead on the project. Here's
what they had to say. Thank you so much for

(01:56):
joining me today. We're delighted to be here. Thanks for
having us so. Dr how for our listeners, can you
set up the problem? Why is there such a critical
shortage of ventilators? Are they particularly hard to make? So?
Ventilators themselves are very complex machines. I mean, anything that's
going to be a piece of life saving equipment, uh
often will be that way. UH, And so they're they're

(02:17):
expensive to make and they but particularly for COVID nineteen patients,
they're often on ventilators for longer than a typical patient
might be and so the ventilator supply is being used
partly because I seeus are getting full of COVID patients,
but partly because those patients are then on ventilators for
a longer time. So there's definitely a desperate need as

(02:37):
we've seen. Um So Astroid tell us about the Smith
Vent and the design challenge. So smith Vent is a
team of Satie Smith College engineering alumni and fronts and
we joined together as part of the COVID nineteen challenge.
What we've created is a rapidly manufacturable pneumatic van sila

(02:59):
so just to quickly tailored to COVID nineteen patients and
for ease of you buy healthcare workers. So what it
is is something that someone can easily take up in
terms of a design, in terms of what prototype, do
some additional testing, do some additional future work and hopefully
be able to manufacture very quickly to get it on

(03:19):
the ground and going for a COVID nineteen patient. That's incredible.
That's incredible and dr How what made the Smith vent
design so special? Well, I think one of the things
that we really focused on was making sure it met
the requirements needed for a ventilator, but could be done
with fewer components and less cost than a typical commercial

(03:39):
one that you could find. So we leverage a lot
of open source ideas in terms of what ventilators look
like and and work, how they work UH, and try
to figure out what is the most streamlined package to
put that together to enable ventilation for a patient without
adding too many extra bells and whistles to increase cost.

(04:00):
And so what is the next step for these ventilators?
Will they go into production and where will they be used?
So the competition organizers are going forward with our design
and they're working with a medical device company to do
a gap analysis to think about ultimate manufacturing in Africa,
which means they need to figure out what additional work

(04:21):
needs to happen to meet the regulatory compliance and regulatory
process in Africa and then the manufacturing process as well.
So it's it's easily another six months month, maybe maybe
longer depending on how much funding they're able to procure.
But right now, well right now the US, the US
had been doing all right in terms of um supply
of ventilators. With all the recent outbreaks, that may not

(04:43):
be the case anymore, but certainly places in Africa are
far far behind in terms of having enough ventilators for
the cases that they have. So now I understand that
this was driven by a predominantly female team UM, which
is exciting to hear about. Do you think that had
an pact? I would say it had an impact in
that we were all really very collaborative. But whether that

(05:06):
was the fact that we were largely female, or the
fact that we all came to this in a place
of of wanting to contribute, being motivated to collaborate, and
the fact that everyone almost everyone on the team UM
was graduating from Smith College and had that common experience.
I'm not sure you could tease out one one variable
over another, but certainly we were a very collaborative and

(05:26):
effective team. We were excited to learn about this predominantly
female engineering team, and we know how important it is
for young women to see role models in STEM. What
has it been like for you being a female engineer.
I think being a female engineer something that you do
look for our role models, so people that you can
really learn from and model yourself. Again, and for my

(05:51):
team mis events, I think that's exactly what we are
not only for future engineers, but for each other. So
I've been inspired by people that I've worked with on
this project, um Prisons, that basically came in and said, Hi,
I have this piece of expertise. I'm not sure where
it's gonna fit, but I'm going to jump right in.
And that attitude towards work and towards collaboration has been

(06:15):
hugely inspired for me, and I hope that our story
in turn is hugely inspiring for other women in engineering. Well.
I think it definitely will be. Thank you so much
for joining us. We are so excited about what you're doing,
and we will be really excited to see how these
ventilators really helped the world. Thank you. Thanks very much.
Thanks to Dr Susanna Howe and Astrod Landau for that

(06:36):
insight into a fascinating process. So here's something good for today.
When there's a crisis, we can look to ingenuity and
innovation to help us find a path forward. The Smith
College team that designed a new type of ventilator was
made up of mostly women, and it shows us that
to build the future we all want to see, women
must be part of designing that future. Have a great day.

(07:09):
Thank you, for listening, and please share Today's Something Good
with others in your life. This is Kim Azzarelli, co
author of Fast Forward and co founder of Seneca Women.
To learn more about Seneca Women, go to Seneca Women
dot com or download the Seneca Women app free in
the app store. Cares Something Good is a production of
the Seneca Women podcast network and I Heart Radio Have

(07:29):
a Great Day. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
check out the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.