The engineering and technology profession has a distinguished and proud history of responding to crises through innovation and creativity under multiple constraints, including time.
A classic example is the challenges NASA faced to bring the crew of Apollo 13 home alive after an explosion that resulted in the loss of oxygen due to a major system failure, putting the astronauts' lives in jeopardy unless a solution was designed and deployed very quickly.
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented analogous challenges for health care workers as they strive to treat patients. One critical area faced by Indiana University Health and other health care systems was contingency planning to provide enough ventilators to patients who might need them. Thanks to the outstanding relationship between the School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI and IU Health, our faculty were ready to respond when IU Health reached out for assistance with creative solutions.
School of Engineering and Technology dean David RussomannoView print quality image
David Russomanno. Photo courtesy of the School of Engineering and Technology
IU Health requested an initial design and fabrication of components by the School of Engineering and Technology that would be able to serve 100 patients with 50 ventilators, along with the capability to provide more components proportional to demand as part of surge planning.
Paul Yearling, a clinical assistant professor of mechanical engineering technology, along with other faculty members from the Department of Engineering Technology, reverse-engineered, redesigned and fabricated ventilator parts and other critical electrical and mechanical components required to split a ventilator's function to serve two patients if necessary.
An engineering solution to achieve the same functionality with half of the originally designed capability, in this case ventilators, was reminiscent in many ways to the creativity required with Apollo 13 to provide oxygen for the astronauts after the major system failure.
In addition, given Yearling's well-established relationship with IU Health, he was also able to rapidly start up and lead the production to 3D-print much-needed personal protective equipment, or PPE, as a backup for IU Health.
And the School of Engineering and Technology's contributions do not end there.
Professor of electrical and computer engineering Stanley Chien, using facilities provided by the Transportation and Autonomous Systems Institute at IUPUI along with facilities provided by IUPUI's energy, mechanical and computer science vs software engineering engineering programs, fabricated intubation boxes to protect health care clinicians from virus-laden aerosols often resulting from intubation procedures. Such a just-in-time fabrication was particularly helpful for some rural and regional hospitals in the Midwest that did not have adequate personal protective equipment.
In addition, four teams led by faculty in mechanical and energy engineering worked diligently to complete innovative ventilator designs and created rapid prototypes ready for testing. An ambu-bag-style ventilator was created by Jaime Arcos, a former visiting scholar at IUPUI, in close collaboration with associate professor Andres Tovar.
A classic example is the challenges NASA faced to bring the crew of Apollo 13 home alive after an explosion that resulted in the loss of oxygen due to a major system failure, putting the astronauts' lives in jeopardy unless a solution was designed and deployed very quickly.
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented analogous challenges for health care workers as they strive to treat patients. One critical area faced by Indiana University Health and other health care systems was contingency planning to provide enough ventilators to patients who might need them. Thanks to the outstanding relationship between the School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI and IU Health, our faculty were ready to respond when IU Health reached out for assistance with creative solutions.
School of Engineering and Technology dean David RussomannoView print quality image
David Russomanno. Photo courtesy of the School of Engineering and Technology
IU Health requested an initial design and fabrication of components by the School of Engineering and Technology that would be able to serve 100 patients with 50 ventilators, along with the capability to provide more components proportional to demand as part of surge planning.
Paul Yearling, a clinical assistant professor of mechanical engineering technology, along with other faculty members from the Department of Engineering Technology, reverse-engineered, redesigned and fabricated ventilator parts and other critical electrical and mechanical components required to split a ventilator's function to serve two patients if necessary.
An engineering solution to achieve the same functionality with half of the originally designed capability, in this case ventilators, was reminiscent in many ways to the creativity required with Apollo 13 to provide oxygen for the astronauts after the major system failure.
In addition, given Yearling's well-established relationship with IU Health, he was also able to rapidly start up and lead the production to 3D-print much-needed personal protective equipment, or PPE, as a backup for IU Health.
And the School of Engineering and Technology's contributions do not end there.
Professor of electrical and computer engineering Stanley Chien, using facilities provided by the Transportation and Autonomous Systems Institute at IUPUI along with facilities provided by IUPUI's energy, mechanical and computer science vs software engineering engineering programs, fabricated intubation boxes to protect health care clinicians from virus-laden aerosols often resulting from intubation procedures. Such a just-in-time fabrication was particularly helpful for some rural and regional hospitals in the Midwest that did not have adequate personal protective equipment.
In addition, four teams led by faculty in mechanical and energy engineering worked diligently to complete innovative ventilator designs and created rapid prototypes ready for testing. An ambu-bag-style ventilator was created by Jaime Arcos, a former visiting scholar at IUPUI, in close collaboration with associate professor Andres Tovar.
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