Called VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally), the device was developed by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to free up the nation's limited supply of traditional ventilators so they may be used on patients with the most severe COVID-19 symptoms.
Photo credit: At left, doctors at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City give a thumbs up after testing a ventilator prototype developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. At right, JPL engineers are working on the ventilator prototype for coronavirus patients. Credit: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City and NASA/JPL-Caltech
A new high-pressure ventilator developed by NASA engineers and tailored to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) patients passed a critical test Tuesday at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, an epicenter of COVID-19 in the United States.
The device, called VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally), was developed by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to free up the nation's limited supply of traditional ventilators so they may be used on patients with the most severe COVID-19 symptoms.
NASA next is seeking expedited FDA approval for the device via an emergency use authorization, a fast-track approval process developed for crisis situations that takes just days rather than years. To get input from a gold-standard medical facility, JPL delivered a prototype of the device to the Human Simulation Lab in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Mount Sinai for additional testing.
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