Built with parts available at Home Depot, costing less than $250, this DIY medical device may bridge the gap where COVID-19 patients overwhelm hospitals.

A ventilator envisioned by a University of Florida engineer and built with do-it-yourself parts gained first-step FDA authorization this week, offering hope that it could be in use within weeks at hospitals around the world where COVID-19 patients have overwhelmed supplies of traditional medical equipment.

The ventilator, composed of parts readily available for less than $250, can be assembled in less than an hour. UF has made plans and software available free over the internet.

“The testing is obviously important right now because the worst-case scenario is that a patient will need three weeks of ventilator support, so we want to make sure this will run non-stop for three weeks,” said Samsun Lampotang, a professor of anesthesiology in the UF College of Medicine, who led design of the device.

“Our fear is that the surge will overtake us. But in Florida it looks like we’ll be able to finish our testing, which will end not this Friday but next Friday,” Lampotang said Wednesday.

“Our time frame (for approval) is days. Normally it is years,” he said.

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Authorization from the federal Food and Drug Administration is needed before hospitals can begin using plans to build their own ventilators. The FDA is allowing a two-step process for the Emergency Use Authorization.

The first step — design review — in the past has taken months to complete. Lampotang submitted his pre-EUA application at 9 p.m. Tuesday. He received word before midnight that he can proceed to the final step.

By next Friday, the test models will have cycled through 1 million assisted breaths over more than three weeks.

Patients suffering severe cases of COVID-19 can require ventilators to help them breathe. Patients can die if the equipment isn’t available. “New York really needs this right now,” Lampotang said.

The DIY ventilator doesn’t look impressive. Short pieces of PVC are assembled in an H-shape less than 3 feet long. At one end, an air compressor regulator receives oxygen. The flow is controlled by a Rainbird lawn irrigation valve that is wired to an Arduino microprocessor, familiar to computer hobbyists. Tubes at the other end would lead into a patient’s lungs.

The pieces can be pulled apart because using PVC cement could add hazardous fumes, but they are snug enough to hold despite the air pressure.

In a lab at the medical school, a webcam monitors each simulated breath.

As an engineering student at UF, Lampotang helped respiratory therapists build a mobile ventilator that became a commercial success. It sparked an idea when projections showed the coronavirus pandemic might overwhelm the supply of ventilators at hotspots in the United States and around the world.

Working with parts bought at Home Depot, and collaborating with colleagues at UF and around the globe, they invented an open-source DIY ventilator.

A Canadian anesthesiologist built one as a home project with his school-age kids.

Schools & my office are closed so...it's project time!! Gave me a chance to explain how a #ventilator works since they kept hearing it on the news. We put this proof of concept vent together based on what we saw from UF Health. https://t.co/278MeiRIZY@VanCollegeNews #StayAtHome pic.twitter.com/LugnZJ6n6O

— Brian Chanpong (@chanpong) April 4, 2020

Standard hospital ventilators are designed for use by a single patient, but in New York and hot spots in Europe up to four patients are placed on a single ventilator. That can create cross-contamination between the patients.

The emerging plan is that when there is insufficient availability of standard hospital ventilators, anesthesia machines that also have the ability to assist breathing will be used. When those grow short, mobile ventilators will be brought in. After that, ventilators pulled from veterinary hospitals will be brought into service.

The fifth option will be the UF ventilator. But in the developing world, where other options may not be available to begin with, it may be the only option.

There will be two general designs: a strict design and set of parts approved by the FDA, and an “off label” version that may need to draw on whatever similar parts are available in different parts of the world.

“I’m trying to make sure we don’t oversell this because that’s easy to do. I’m trying to be very conservative. That’s why we have such transparency. That’s the open source aspect,” Lampotang said.

For instance, one drawback of the minimalist design is that it lacks “spontaneous support.” It controls the patient’s breathing without backing off when the patient may be able to take an unaided breath. Ventilators with spontaneous support are better because a recovering patient can ween off them gradually.

“It’s better than nothing,” Lampotang said. “It’s survival.”

And he hopes a next step will be to use machine learning technology to help with basic adjustments a respiratory therapist would handle, in case therapists are in short supply.

He doesn’t envision the device as a commercial product, although Lampotang has 43 patents belonging to UF. In fact, after the pandemic ends, the FDA Emergency Use Authorization will expire.

“We envision this as a bridge ventilator. It bridges the gap. Hopefully GM and Ford have the assembly lines going and we’ve done our job,” Lampotang said.

Editor’s note: This story has been edited since initial publication to clarify the goal of future machine learning enhancements.