Prisma Health said Wednesday that it has developed a device that will allow one ventilator to be used on four patients suffering from the coronavirus.

Ventilators are an important part of treating people suffering with the respiratory infection. And a shortage of ventilators has been a concern of health leaders dealing with the virus.

Officials said that the device, called the VESper, or ventilation expansion splitter, has been approved by the FDA for emergency use authorization.

They said they will share the development with the world, including Italy which has suffered so much, in an effort to help patients.

The device, which is produced using a 3D printer, was the brainchild of emergency physician Dr. Sarah Farris, also a member of the faculty at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, said Dean Dr. Marjorie Jenkins.

Farris discussed the need with her husband, Ryan, a software engineer and they presented it to a pulmonologist and together they came up with the device, Jenkins said.

From there, they went to colleagues at Clemson University who printed the first prototype. Then, they approached Jenkins, who’d been at the FDA for four years.

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She said she reached out to FDA on Friday night at 10 p.m. and by Monday at noon they’d gotten emergency use authorization.

“Drawing on the strength of Prisma Health academic partnerships with USC and Clemson, the physicians and engineers and others came together to make this happen,” Jenkins said. “It will impact patients all over the country.”

Dr. Peter Tilkemeier, chair of the Department of Medicine at Prisma Health-Upstate, said that Prisma currently has enough ventilators for its patients, but that’s not the case in many parts of the country.

“This is good news during these times of significant illness and stress,” he said. “As we know, we have had a rapid increase in patients who require ventilators. And there can be an acute shortage of equipment to meet patient needs.”

The device is produced with material already in use for medical devices and at minimal cost, according to officials, who plan to share it with national medical teams.

It works by attaching to the ventilator and splitting out to patients. It can adjust the flow of oxygen and optimizes the flow, Tilkemeier said.

Prisma Health experts are working with national teams who have limited ventilatory capacity and can use the prototype in the future, he said.

“We will be working with teams to monitor clinical outcomes to determine if the device performs as designed,” he said. “This can be lifesaving when the number of critically ill patients is greater than number of ventilators,” he said.

The device will be used only when no comparable or satisfactory means are available, he said.

“This will allow you to share a ventilator,” Jenkins said. “The alternative is almost a certain death for that patient.”

Liv Osby is the health writer at The Greenville News. She can be reached at losby@greenvillenews.com, 864-298-4422 or @livgnews.