April 2020: mHealth Lab team wins the 2nd Runner-up prize in the “Design For Life | Ventilators for ALL” competition organized by Edge, The Foundation! March 31, 2020

Congratulations to the Department of Biomedical Engineering, BUET team for being selected as a finalist in the “Design for life | Ventilators for All” challenge. Just a tiny ray of light among all the COVID-19 darkness.

Apparently, even if a ventilator prototype works, there are still a lot of unsolved problems to be addressed including stress tests, gas flow analysis tests, clinical validation and regulatory approval before something can be mass-produced. As far as I know, there are no ventilator testing and quality control equipment in Bangladesh (please prove me wrong)! Finally, we have to ensure that we have enough trained ICU personnel (doctors & nurses) with proper safety gear who can operate them. Ventilators are not plug-n-play devices like your smartphone. Otherwise, a million ventilators will be useless, unfortunately.

Once again, many thanks to the BME team: Meemnur Rashid, Nusrat Binta Nizam, Anirban Chakraborty, Shams Nafisa Ali, Fardeen Ahmed, Farhan Muhib, Kaisar Ahmed Alman, Shurav Kumar Das, Alfaj Uddin Ahmed, Soham Irtiza Swapnil, Fiaz Ahmed, Samiul Based Shuvo, Tanzila Binti Alam, Manzil-e Akbar Khan, Ragib Abid, Nondita Datta.