Liverpool LHCb team members work for Covid-19 ventilators
CERN has been involved almost from the beginning in the efforts against the pandemic. Already since March the “CERN against COVID-19” task force was established to identify and support initiatives that can be performed at CERN.
On 1st April the proposal for CERN’s High Energy Ventilator - HEV was released, co-authored by Liverpool Professor Themis Bowcock and several other Liverpool LHCb team members.
Currently, our Liverpool LHCb team are working on the software and the documentation of the HEV project, an effort led by Drs Karol Hennessy. Vinicius Franco-Lima and David Hutchcroft are part of the documentation team. Stephen Farry and David Hutchcroft, along with 1st year PhD student Adam Abed Abud, are working on the User interface for the ventilator with particular focus on a web implementation, allowing remote monitoring of patient status and any alarm conditions that arise. These developments are paralleled in the onscreen interface of the ventilator. Particular attention has been paid to accessibility, visual clarity and familiarity for clinicians, regionalisation/language, and, first and foremost patient safety.
In addition, Dr Karol Hennessy is working on the controls for the ventilator - the operation controlling valves for inhale/exhale cycles of breathing based on clinical input and patient airway response.
The HEV is designed to cover several modes of operation required by ventilators defined by MHRA (UK) and WHO specifications.
We would like to thank the team for their effort and wish them every success in this work for the community.
Additional information
https://home.cern/news/news/cern/initiatives-cern-community-global-fight-against-covid-19
https://home.cern/news/news/cern/international-review-high-energy-ventilator