Rapid Design and Evaluation of a Dual Patient Ventilator System

Currently, using a single ventilator to manage two patients with different lung capacities has many challenges.

To address this issue, the project will build on an earlier and related MxD project, 20-17-01, which developed a passive splitter device.

In the earlier project, one “Lungs-in-the-Loop” testbed demonstration case featured a fault-detection scenario, in which lung deterioration in two patients created a system imbalance that triggered an alarm. Thanks to the executable digital twin deployed in the testbed, it was possible to accurately pinpoint which patient of the two was at risk.

With the active splitter enhancements that the Siemens team proposes to implement, when the alarm is triggered, it would be possible to regulate the tidal volumes between the two patients. That would effectively adjust the distribution of flow in the two inspiratory lines and help reduce patient risk.

The active splitter system will have a dynamically controlled valve on each of the splitter segments in the inspiratory lines to regulate the airflow to each patient. This would allow the single ventilator to manage two patients with different lung capacities.

The development of the active splitter will enhance the demonstration cases of the “Lungs-in-the-Loop” testbed deployed on the MxD Factory Floor, extend software and mechanical design advances, and help accelerate the use of dual ventilator systems.