TRIPLE EIGHT REVEAL NEW VENTILATOR

Triple Eight Engineer Jeromy Moore works on the latest version the team’s ventilator. Image: Supplied

Triple Eight Race Engineering Australia has unveiled ‘The Conrod Project’ the second version of its emergency medical ventilator.

By DAN McCARTHY

The second iteration of Triple Eight Race Engineering’s emergency medical ventilators was revealed in the behind the scenes Triple Eight mini documentary series.

The Queensland based team has put all of its efforts into creating the ventilator since racing ceased six weeks ago.

After the first prototype was completed work immediately began to not only fine-tune the existing device, as well as enhancing its capabilities to meet the requirements published by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

Triple Eight also has to reach the expectations set by the Queensland State Government for an emergency ventilator that would be suitable for use in a field hospital situation.

“The TGA has put together a specification document which has a ‘required’ list and a ‘desired’ list for Covid-19 ventilators,” said Mark Dutton, Team Manager of Triple Eight.

“Our ventilator is currently on track to satisfy both lists fully, but clearly would still need to be approved by the TGA if and when it goes into production.

“Today’s ICU ventilators have big graphical screens to display information, which is not in the document from the government, but when we spoke to doctors and ICU specialists, it was clear this was something we should incorporate so that we can aid medical professionals to deliver the best care for the patients.

“On top of that, it became apparent that it’s essential to have a machine that can automatically respond to the patient’s own breathing inputs and react to those positively. Achieving these and other goals for our machine has been a huge challenge but really satisfying.”

Triple Eight Technical Director Jeromy Moore explained that ‘The Conrod Project’ has a number of unique features that differentiate it from other emergency ventilators currently used in hospitals including the telemetry system.

“Our ventilator incorporates a telemetry system which means that a qualified doctor or nurse can monitor a patient’s vitals, not only in real time but also analyse it later. They can download the data like one of our race cars.”

Dutton said that this came about after multiple conversations with doctors who told them that were lacking fellow staff not ventilators.

“Their initial worry in Australia was not a lack of ventilators but a lack of staff to operate the ventilators,” said Dutton.

“We’ve tackled that by installing onboard telemetry, like the race cars, that means one specialist can be monitoring as many patients as they feel comfortable, whether that’s 10, 50 or 100, and with the onboard alarms they can then direct the attention to the patient that needs it.”

Moore explained that building the ventilator is showing what they can do as a team.

“The goal for this project is to demonstrate that we can provide home grown solutions to substantial engineering challenges quickly and effectively and it’s about being able to assist with saving lives if needed,” Moore concluded.

The new documentary delves into the partnership between Triple Eight and Australian company PWR, a cooling solutions company that supplies some of the world’s aerospace, IT firms and a number of Formula 1 teams from its Gold Coast location. The documentary is available to view on the Triple Eight Race Engineering Facebook page.

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