Many COVID-19 patients develop severe lung injuries requiring non-invasive oxygen therapies such as high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC), which spares intubation and mechanical ventilators for the most critical cases. These non-invasive procedures do not require ventilators. However, many institutions are not permitted to use these procedures due to fear of aerosolizing virus that elevates the risk to healthcare workers.
Rising to this challenge, we invented novel negative pressure devices, Aerosolve Helmet and Aerosolve Tent, that doctors are calling “game changers”, to treat COVID-19 patients without ventilators while enabling clinical distancing to protect healthcare workers and other patients.
Currently, the worldwide practice is to place powered air purifying respirators or PAPRs (as PPE) on front-line workers that pump purified positive air (with a HEPA filter) into a helmet. Instead, we flipped this paradigm by placing a negative pressure helmet (with a HEPA filter) on patients to contain and capture the virus from spreading to healthy people around.
As one physician noted, “We have been putting PPE on the wrong people”. Simply put, Aerosolve technology is PPE (negative “PAPR”) worn by the patient in order to protect healthcare providers and mitigate intra-facility spread.
These devices offer the ability to transform any bed into an ICU bed
Aerosolve Helmet is over 100X less expensive and 22X more effective than a negative pressure room.
Aerosolve Tent is over 100X less expensive and 50X more effective than a negative pressure room.
Benefits
Improved confidence and comfort among healthcare workers
Frees ventilators for many critical cases
Spares Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
Rapid setup and readily scalable
Comfortable; ability to communicate
Low cost alternative
Easy-to-implement solution for low-resource countries
Value beyond pandemics; Useful in other respiratory conditions where risk of infectious transmissibility is high