PVP1–The People’s Ventilator Project: A fully open, low-cost, pressure-controlled ventilator

Abstract

We present a fully open ventilator platform--The People's Ventilator: PVP1-- with complete documentation and detailed build instructions, and a DIY cost of \$1,300 USD. Here, we validate PVP1 against key performance criteria specified in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Emergency Use Authorization for Ventilators. Notably, PVP1 performs well over a wide range of test conditions and has been demonstrated to perform stably for a minimum of 72,000 breath cycles over three days with a mechanical test lung. As an open project, PVP1 can enable both future educational, academic, and clinical developments in the ventilator space.

Deep Sequence Modeling for Pressure Controlled Mechanical Ventilation

“…The dataset was collected from a modified open-source ventilator, designed by the People's Ventilator Project (PVP) at Princeton University (LaChance et al, 2020), and connected to an artificial bellows test lung (IngMar, 2020) via a respiratory circuit (Suo et al, 2021). Figure 1 below illustrates the circuit, with the two control inputs highlighted in green and the state variable (airway pressure) to predict in blue.…”

“…A recent paper demonstrated the potential advantage of machine learning for ventilator control (Suo et al, 2021) on an open-source ventilator (LaChance et al, 2020) designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, paving the way for intelligent control methods that are robust and require less manual monitoring. We exploit this study and present a simulator based on a deep sequence model and leverage statistical learning techniques to improve the model’s enhancement.…”

Machine Learning for Mechanical Ventilation Control

“…To develop simulators and control algorithms, we run mechanical ventilation tasks on a physical test lung (IngMar, 2020) using the open-source ventilator designed by Princeton University’s People’s Ventilator Project (PVP) (LaChance et al, 2020).…”

“…In designing and manufacturing ventilators, a standard proxy for the patient’s lung is a mechanical test lung , a physical instrument with calibrated bellows and springs which attach to the ventilator’s tubing. We use the hardware setup from the open-source People’s Ventilator Project (LaChance et al, 2020), which is outlined in Section 3.…”

“…However, it is difficult to evaluate new control paradigms using commercial ventilators as they are closed systems both in terms of hardware and software. Thus, to demonstrate the potential advantage of machine learning for ventilator control, we validate our approach on a modular, low-cost, and fully open-source ventilator (LaChance et al, 2020) designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.…”