A Villanova University team has successfully built a $500 hospital ventilator that would normally cost $50,000, writes Erin Schulte for wired.com.

C. Nataraj, a Villanova College of Engineering professor, put a volunteer team together when frontline doctors worried about running out of ventilators for COVID-19 patients.

They invented an emergency ventilator, NovaVent, that provides 80 percent of a hospital ventilator’s function, at 20 percent the cost.

Parts would cost $500 and the schematics would be open-sourced, so anyone could manufacture it.

Car parts manufacturers, roboticists, anesthesiologists, nurses, and engineers were involved.

Using 3-D printers, they produced parts much more cheaply, like a 50-cent flow sensor that normally costs several hundred dollars.

The prototype is awaiting FDA approval. Villanova has applied for a patent to keep the device open sourced.

The university is raising money for NovaMed, a lab that would produce inexpensive medical equipment so lifesaving care won’t be dependent on income when the need arises.

“How come we haven’t built the technology, the economic and social systems that are able to handle a situation like this—especially when something like this was predicted?” Nataraj said. “Why should a single person die because we weren’t prepared?”

Read more about NovaVent and the Villanova effort here.

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