“What started as pure intellectual curiosity quickly grew into an emotional race against time to potentially save lives,” Zabala said. “We wanted to know if we could design a solution to solve the ventilator shortage problem.”

The device was successfully tested on a live animal at Auburn’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

MAKING AN IMPACT

RE-InVENT is efficient and economical, two key considerations for the development team.

The device can be assembled in four hours using about $700 worth of parts in addition to a standard CPAP machine, compared to the typical hospital ventilator price tag of $25,000 or more.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has provided guidance to health care providers that may allow them to use RE-InVENT to help increase the availability of ventilators and other respiratory devices during the pandemic.

The Auburn team is continuing to work on the project and exploring options to share the design with healthcare providers and manufacturers. More info is available here.

“These are difficult times,” Burch said. “Everybody who understands the gravity of the situation wants to do something to help, so it feels good to think you’ve helped with something that may have an impact.”

Auburn engineering faculty and staff also have donated personal protective equipment and supplies to East Alabama Medical Center, including 10 gallons of hand sanitizer mixed in a campus lab and 400 3D-printed protective face shields.

A group of volunteers from engineering, the College of Agriculture and the College of Architecture, Design and Construction has been producing the face shields using a network of on-campus 3D printers.

They plan to keep running the printers around the clock, with the ability to produce about 150 face shields per day.