Colombian Engineers’ Ventilators to Be Tested in COVID Patients

In just a few months, researchers have constructed low-cost ventilators that can keep sedated pigs alive. Getting them to work safely and reliably in people is the next challenge.

Written byKatarina Zimmer
| 5 min read

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ABOVE: Engineers at University of La Sabana have put their prototype ventilator, which costs less than $3,000 to build, through a series of tests.
COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF LA SABANA

In March, as Colombia’s coronavirus cases were taking off, officials there selected a number of hospitals in the country to look after COVID-19 patients in need of intensive care. The University of La Sabana Teaching Hospital in the small city of Chía just outside Bogotá was to take in patients from across the Cundinamarca region, a patch of Andean plateau with nearly 3 million inhabitants. But the hospital only had 25 ventilators—hardly enough for the hundreds of patients expected to become so sick they’d need mechanical aid to breathe.

With no affordable ventilator options on the market, the vice president of University of La Sabana turned to Julian Echeverry and his colleagues in the institution’s mechanical engineering department, asking if ...

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  • katya katarina zimmer

    After a year teaching an algorithm to differentiate between the echolocation calls of different bat species, Katarina decided she was simply too greedy to focus on one field of science and wanted to write about all of them. Following an internship with The Scientist in 2017, she’s been happily freelancing for a number of publications, covering everything from climate change to oncology. Katarina is a news correspondent for The Scientist and contributes occasional features to the magazine. Find her on Twitter @katarinazimmer and read her work on her website.

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