As country after country goes through Covid upsurges, its clear that one of the biggest ways of saving lives in this pandemic are ventilators.

Even in the best times there is shortage of ventilators in Indians hospitals. During Covid upsurges this problem will be compounded. How to increase ventilatory capacity in a country like India where you cannot spend much on the problem, and order a huge new batch of ventilators.

After thinking about it, we decided to take a three pronged approach to the problem.

1. Use 3D printing to print ad hoc parts: Due to supply chain having broken down, its been hard to get parts recently. As a case in Italy showed, local 3D printing resources can help with this. We did a test experiment (see more here).
2. 3D print ventilator splitters: Splitting ventilator has been reported in disaster scenarios before. We are working on a prototype splitter.
3. 3D printing a small ventilator

Project Vayu was started by Dr. Sonal Asthana of Aster CMI hospital in Bangalore, in collaboration with his colleagues at the hospital. It is being in collaboration with Jon Boutelle, Rashmi Sinha & Amit Ranjan who are helping provide support for the project.