A common thread uniting the world community is near-universal agreement that 2020 has been the most challenging year in decades. From young to old, life as we know it has been upended. Virtually everything we have come to take for granted, from employment, to education, socializing with friends, or buying toilet paper has been put on pause as we grapple with an implacable enemy that recognizes no political or demographic boundaries. We have had to quickly adapt and adopt common sense mitigation strategies until we prevail in the nearly year-long battle against COVID-19. And with a vaccine imminent, we are collectively answering that challenge.
When the first stay-at-home orders hit California in March of this year, BIOPAC Systems, along with hundreds of other offices in the Santa Barbara area, shut down to protect our employees. As small businesses made masks, and automakers retooled assembly lines to produce ventilators, we assessed how to best use our own resources in this pandemic.
We brought together our senior team of engineers and applied existing BIOPAC technologies for one early tool that has been instrumental in saving lives.The Ventilator Ventilation System can be used in ventilator prototyping, large-scale production testing for new ventilator manufacturing, and field testing for existing ventilators. Critical pressure and airflow measurements are tracked through the system. Test automation and workflow management is available through scripting. Technician instructions, procedures and prompts ensure the correct procedure is performed and a pass/fail audit trail is documented.
The BIOPAC Ventilator Validation Kit was used at Ford Motor Company, Virgin Orbital, NASA/STARK Industries and with others to increase their ventilator production capacity and, in Ford’s case, meet their goal of producing 50,000 ventilators for U.S. Hospitals.
As educators also struggled with changes to their classrooms with nearly all U.S. universities going to virtual learning or hybrid classroom environments, we sought to safely preserve some of the in-person learning experience.
In June, the Biopac Student Lab Practical Lab Learning Kit was released, or BSL Home. This single-channel data acquisition system preserved the lab experience even for students learning physiology from their homes; Lessons on EMG, ECG, EEG, EOG, respiration, biofeedback, and aerobic exercise are pre-configured and included with a handheld device that includes integrated hardware and software.
BIOPAC offers a wide array of wired and wireless equipment that can be used in your research. To find more information on the Ventilator Validation Kit or the BSL Home Practical Lab Kit, please visit the BIOPAC website.
Photo by Long Truong on Unsplash
Recent Comments