ARIA GROUP COVID-19 BRIDGE VENTILATOR DESIGN PROPOSAL PRESS RELEASE

IRVINE, Calif., April 3, 2020 – It’s no secret that doctors around the world are preparing for a tsunami of COVID-19 patients, many of whom will need the support of a ventilator in order to survive this insidious disease. After seeing a plea on Facebook from a group of medical professionals looking for engineering help, Aria Group has designed a simple solution for a mechanical bridge ventilator that can be built affordably, quickly and in sufficient numbers to help address this crisis.

The solution uses a common household stand mixer (i.e., KitchenAid Artisan) and a self-inflating bag valve mask (such as an Ambu bag), a low-cost, standard item used in emergency medicine.

Normally, a bag valve mask requires an attendant to pump air (or pure oxygen) into the lungs of a patient, a labor-intensive but vital short-term lifesaving treatment. Aria designed a cam attachment with a simple gearbox that connects to the mixer in exactly the same way as any factory-offered accessory, converting the manual treatment tool into an unattended mechanical bridge ventilator that can operated consistently with minimal supervision from medical staff. Most importantly, the attachment can be manufactured in small shops using simple tools for metal fabrication and/or a 3D printer.

“The world’s hospitals are running short on high-end ventilators, and the process to manufacture more of them takes time, so we need a solution that avoids all of the complexity and delays related to supply chain,” said Clive Hawkins, president and CEO of Aria Group, and the designer who originated the idea. “Our design uses commonly available items, and the new parts can be built very simply and cheaply. There are thousands of those mixers around the world that could be donated locally and combined with locally fabricated parts, creating a geo-targeted solution without any logistics delays. Now, we just need to get the plans up online, so we can crowdsource manufacturing and quickly get these units in operation around the world.”

The call to action was put out by the Bridge Ventilator Consortium, founded by Govind Rajan, an anesthesiologist at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), fellow UCI surgeon Brian Wong and Tom Milner of the University of Texas, Austin, with key support coming from UCI Director of Engineering Marc Madou.

“This is the purest and best version of crowdsourcing I’ve ever seen,” said Rajan. “We posted a PowerPoint on Facebook and within hours Clive contacted me to begin working on a solution. The ramp up time for high-end ventilator production is just too long.”

Aria intends to post simple CAD files online as early as next week, allowing anyone with the necessary skills and tools to begin production and inviting others to refine and improve the design. Interested parties should visit: https://www.aria-group.com/covid19-1. Meanwhile, Rajan and his UCI colleagues are working to validate the design with mannequin testing and secure necessary approvals from the FDA to deploy the solution in U.S. hospitals.

“In normal times, Aria designs, engineers and builds prototype vehicles, like air taxis, autonomous cars and defense drones, but these are not normal times,” said Hawkins. “We want to be part of the solution.”

Please email covid19@aria-group.com for more information.

ABOUT ARIA GROUP

Aria Group, Inc., is a full-service prototype development and low-volume manufacturing company. Aria group provides engineering, design, product development, prototype fabrication, and specialty or low-volume production services for its clients in mass transportation, automotive, aerospace, architecture, entertainment, marine and military industries. Founded in 1995, Aria’s team of approximately 100 highly skilled employees work from a 65,000 square-foot facility in Irvine, California, and separate research and development offices in Traverse City, Michigan.

Aria’s specialized services that complement the product development process include: engineering, styling, conceptual design, product design, digital modeling and Class-A surfacing, digital rendering, clay sculpting, hard modeling, prototype fabrication, composite fabrication tooling design and manufacture, advanced composites, seat and trim development, digital prototyping, 3-, 4- and 5-axis machining, rapid prototyping, tooling models, production and prototype engineering, glass development, wiring harness fabrication and integration, program and vendor management, kinematics modeling and tool design.

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