Written and Edited by Alexis Ha
Coming together to help the greater good, the Bridge Ventilator Consortium was created overnight with the help of many people. One team that was called into play was Devin Ridgley's Hawaii team. For some background, Dr. Devin Ridgley is the Vice President of Biotechnology at HNu Photonics and has aided in developing and commercializing life science technology from the SCORPIO-V Division of HNu Photonics. Read More!
HNu Photonics' usual line of work is in biotechnology, however, under the circumstances, they were able to drop other projects at hand to address the serious shortage of ventilators throughout the nation. Stalling other projects, HNu Photonics created the Automated Recussitation Compression system, or ARC for short, to "develop bridge ventilators to help support the efforts of not only the US government but also the Hawaii government."Since they worked in conjunction with Virgin Orbit, the Bridge Ventilator Consortium had reached out to the Hawaii government asking if they knew any companies that would be open to working on such a daunting, yet rewarding, project. The future collaboration that was to come would create successful ventilators that even closely mimic those of a regular ventilator.
Dr. Ridgley and his team were able to design, test, and fabricate 40 ventilators all within six weeks of starting their project. Although they did use some of the open-source ventilator information that is available on the internet, approximately 80% of the ventilator is original. Working endlessly to produce a life-saving machine, their team was able to supply the first wave of ARCs to the island of Maui and is working on fabricating more to distribute to the mainland. Currently, they still have a team working on improving the design of the ARC which now has most of the fully-functioning capabilities of a normal ventilator. Investors and other interested buyers are awaiting the final product as Dr. Ridgley's team has proven to be nothing short of incredible. Additionally, they are still working on submitting the necessary paperwork for an FDA EUA approval which they hope to get as soon as possible. The Bridge Ventilator Consortium would like to thank the Hawaii team for all of their cooperative efforts and wishes the best of luck for the ARC!
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