COVOX: Providing oxygen during the COVID-19 health emergency.

We introduce an autonomous oxygen concentrator that was designed in Peru to fight the oxygen shortage produced worldwide as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oxygen concentrators represent a suitable and favorable option for administering this gas at the patient's bedside in developing countries, especially when cylinders and tubed systems are unavailable or when access to them is restricted by lack of accessories, inadequate power supply, or shortage of qualified personnel. Our system uses a pressure swing adsorption technique to provide oxygen to patients at a flow rate of up to 15 l/min ± 1,5 l/min and a concentration of 93 % ± 3 %, offering robustness, safety and functionality. The quality measurements obtained from the validation process demonstrate repeatability and accuracy. The complete design files are provided in the source file repository to facilitate oxygen concentrator production in low and middle income countries, where access to oxygen is still a major problem even after the pandemic. Oxygen is part of the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines and is perhaps the only medicine that has no substitute. This device can provide a reliable supply of oxygen for critically ill patients and improve their chances of survival.

Performance of the Masi Peruvian ventilator at high altitude.

In response to Covid-19 crisis, 310 Masi ventilators were produced and validated in Lima, Peru, according to applicable standards. Four of them, were transported to Puno, in order to strengthen ICU Services there, but this set a major challenge to Masi team as effects of altitude on ventilators were unknown. Once there, ventilators were acclimated and calibrated. Volume tidal, I:E ratio, respiratory frequency and PEEP were tested, all of them presenting errors under 15%, except for tidal volume, for which a 25% negative correction was applied. After the installation of a new version of Masi software, parameters were tested again, all of them presenting results with errors below 15%, which allowed the Masi team to take them to ICU services for use.Clinical Relevance- Masi Peruvian Ventilators are able to perform according to their specifications at extremely high altitude, after the adequate calibration. These devices are an alternative to treat COVID-19 patients in the middle of the crisis.

Masi: A mechanical ventilator based on a manual resuscitator with telemedicine capabilities for patients with ARDS during the COVID-19 crisis.

In this article, we introduce a portable and low-cost ventilator that could be rapidly manufactured, to meet the increasing demand of ventilators worldwide produced by COVID-19 pandemic. These ventilators should be rapidly deployable and with functional capabilities to manage COVID-19 patients with severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Our implementation offers robustness, safety and functionality absent in existing solutions to the ventilator shortage (i.e., telemonitoring, easy-to-disinfect, modularity) by maintaining simplicity. The design makes use of a manual resuscitator as the core respiration component activated by a compression mechanism which consist of two electronically controlled paddles. The quality measurements obtained after testing on a calibrated artificial lung demonstrate repeatability and accuracy exceeding human capabilities of manual ventilation. The complete design files are provided in the supplementary materials to facilitate ventilator production even in resource-limited settings. The implementation of this mechanical ventilator could eliminate device rationing or splitting to serve multiple patients on ICUs.