Eric Djie, Initiator of AirNow
This project is not just about bringing another ventilator to market.
“We are looking at the whole situation. An effective solution requires a complete system approach. We especially need to address the human aspects of the Low Resources challenges, such as the current COVID-19 situation.”
The Time Is Now
First 3-months of the Corona Virus pandemic show global demand predictions for lung ventilation for hospitalized patients is grossly under-served.
Doctors and nurses around the world, those who have taken it upon themselves to do everything they can to keep or make us healthy, work under a tremendous strain while being exposed themselves personally.
Future demand, even in best-case scenarios, indicates a glaring need for even more lung ventilators.
Purchase cost and technical skills to operate the current ventilator products is creating a bottleneck that will create unmet demand.
Objectives
Vision
In a world of growing pandemics, the threat to humanity literally becomes existential. Both patients and their caregivers are affected simultaneously. Although necessary medical treatments are known the rapid tidal surge of new patients overwhelms the scarce and severely constrained resource pool of trained medical staff and medical equipment. AirNow is developing new approaches and new thinking to take on pandemic challenges.
Purpose-Built
Unlike other ventilator companies and emergency initiatives of Universities, Engineering groups, and companies like Tesla and Dyson, AirNow is the only company developing a globally - ready ventilator system that is truly scalable and suitable for broad deployment, especially for pandemics.
Meeting Real Needs for Now and the Future
For the first time, AirNow will give Medical Staff around the world unprecedented power to reach more patients, operate more safely, and help even the odds in the battle against the current Coronavirus pandemic.
The AirNow ventilator system not only meets today’s medical need, but is being built to anticipate tomorrow's demand, and is being produced with the specific sensitivity to preserving today’s existing supply-chain while keeping costs affordable and usage simple to drive rapid, mass adoption.
AirNow Preliminary Designs
The newly emerging “mass market” for medical ventilators requires a low-cost, fast-production solution that has high predictability of market delivery. Additionally, it must be a system that keeps the medical staff safe and runs as automatically as possible. Remote monitoring of large number of patients by a physician at a safe location can make a huge impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of available medical professionals.
Partnership Strategy to mitigate risks
It is an immense challenge to boost the production volume of medical ventilators. The manufacturers themselves are not organized and equipped to handle the volume needed (current annual global production is 40-50k units and the need for ventilators is potentially several millions worldwide).
Learn more about our strategy to mitigate risks through partnerships.