Good practice and critical reflection for the realisation of a prototype of a Differential Multiventilation

Details

Supervisors

Raskin, Jean-Pierre

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil électromécanicien, à finalité spécialisée: énergie

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the lack of resources available to hospitals to deal with a large influx of patients. The main limiting factor for hospitals was the lack of medical respirators available for patients, which resulted in a selection of patients to be placed on respirators. One solution to this shortage of medical respirators is to use the differential multiventilation technique. This involves connecting two patients to the same ventilator, while still being able to adjust certain respiratory parameters and take data individually. This individualization of parameters and data acquisition is achieved mainly through the addition of valves and sensors. The aim of this master thesis is to confirm or refute the feasibility of the differential multiventilation technique, while maintaining certain constraints linked to a health crisis context. This work will focus on two main themes. Firstly, a study will be carried out with the aim of building a homemade capnograph using CO2 sensors found on the market, and to confirm or not the feasibility of this device. Then, we will proceed to the analysis of the complete system in order to argue for the transition from a proof-of-concept to a prototype, and thus analyze the viability of the differential multiventilation technique. Finally, we will look at the future objectives of our prototype. What steps still need to be validated before it can be used in hospitals in times of crisis. The results of using a CO2 sensor, with the sensor used during this work, were unfortunately not satisfactory. The sensor's responsiveness was not good enough to obtain a capnogram usable by healthcare staff. However, alternative uses were discussed. In addition, this work has demonstrated that our system is mature enough to assert that the transition from proof-of-concept to prototype has been achieved. This master thesis has therefore demonstrated that, without taking capnography into consideration, our system as a whole has evolved and passed the prototype stage.