OxyPure

About 1 in 6 patients with acute respiratory illnesses, e.g. COVID-19, experience respiratory distress that may require assistive oxygen therapy. While most such patients are put on ventilators – that are invasive, expensive and scarce – simpler and non-invasive oxygen therapy suffices for non-critical patients with mild to moderate symptoms. 

While the technology for non-invasive oxygen therapy exists, there are 2 key drawbacks:

1. System is not auto-adaptive to patient needs; a professional needs to regularly monitor and adjust dosage, draining doctors' time. 
2. Actively sick patients’ exhaled breath may contain airborne pathogens that are released without any disinfection – risking infection spread for caregivers. 

Our solutions is OxyPure – a smart and non-invasive oxygen therapy system with built-in disinfection for exhaled air.

OxyPure can be assembled using affordable, readily-available components - making this cost-effective and scalable globally. OxyPure’s design allows easy usage at home, potentially reducing strain on critical healthcare facilities.

About 1 in 6 patients with severe acute respiratory illnesses, e.g. COVID-19, experience respiratory distress and may require assistive breathing (oxygen therapy for non-critical patients and ventilators for critical patients) to ease distress and reduce escalation of symptoms. While oxygen therapy systems are relatively simple and portable enough to be used at home, there is still significant bias towards using ventilators instead and also providing therapy in hospitals (vs. homes), owing to these drawbacks of oxygen therapy systems:

1. Not auto-adaptive to patient needs: unlike ventilators, oxygen therapy devices do not automatically adjust to patient needs, meaning a professional has to monitor patient status and adjust dosage manually. This incentivizes patients and doctors to mostly administer therapy in hospitals, increasing the strain on our healthcare system in terms of capacity, resources and doctors’ time. 

2. Lack of disinfection of exhaled air: sick patients can be actively infectious and their exhaled air likely contains airborne pathogens that are being directly released into their surroundings. This leaves individuals in the surrounding area (doctors, caregivers) at risk of exposure to the pathogen - risking their health and safety. For example, 151 Italian doctors treating COVID-19 patients died Feb-April, with several times more health workers infected. 

OxyPure is a smart oxygen therapy system for non-critical patients of severe acute respiratory infections, e.g. COVID-19, and includes a built-in disinfection mechanism to neutralize any airborne pathogens in the exhaled air.  

During inhalation, OxyPure supplies the patient with an air-oxygen mix based on individual needs. A pulse oximeter constantly monitors the patient's oxygen saturation level and sends feedback to our smart control system. According to feedback from pulse-oximeter, a specific inspired oxygen percentage (FiO2) is supplied through the inlet port of the non-invasive respiratory mask. Our prototype’s respiratory mask is also designed to reduce oxygen leakage and wastage from typical oxygen supply masks.

When the patient exhales, OxyPure channels the exhaled air through a disinfection chamber with an autonomous disinfectant system (using UV rays, heat activation and HEPA filter) which guarantees a near 100% purified air released to the environment. Unlike various other existing technologies, our disinfection chamber is reusable, low-cost and eco-friendly. 

This smart, simple and safe design means that this system is compatible with at-home use, improves safety for caregivers and is synchronized to patient needs. This also eases burden on healthcare systems by reducing need for worker-hours and hospital beds.

The target population for OxyPure is non-critical patients of acute respiratory illnesses showing early signs of respiratory distress. They are one of the primary beneficiaries, alongside the healthcare system in the patients’ communities. 

The solution can have the following impacts: 

1. Reduces strain on in-hospital resources e.g doctors' time, no. of hospital beds needed, which is especially valuable during a large-scale health crisis like a pandemic, when capacity is stretched thin. 

2. Reduces the risk of contracting infection for caregivers and healthcare workers. 

3. Reduces the unnecessary use of invasive devices (i.e. ventilators) for non-critical patients, reducing the physical and cognitive risks that can come with intubation and sedation for ventilator use. 

Our team is currently performing design research, including feedback from doctors in Dhaka, Bangladesh while working to build a prototype of OxyPure. We then aim to solicit feedback from doctors via demonstrations of the completed prototype, which will allow us to refine our design for direct patient use. 

Our solution relates to the Challenge theme of Health Security and Pandemics in 2 key ways: 

1. Improving health security by improving safety for healthcare workers and caregivers through minimizing airborne pathogen transmission

2. Improving response capacity for large-scale health crisis by reducing  strain on in-hospital resources e.g doctors' time and no. of hospital beds needed. 

Existing oxygen supply systems that can be used for patients of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) with mild-moderate symptoms are: 

1. Simple systems that are not designed to collect patient data and automatically adjust oxygen saturation level according to patient needs.They continue to deliver at a set dosage until readjustment by a professional. If a patient needs an increased dosage, a doctor or nurse has to notice this and then make adjustments manually. Conversely, if a patient needs a lower dosage than the setting, more oxygen is being supplied than used - leading to wastage. This is why our system includes smart sensors to collect patient needs in real time and self-adjust, mitigating the above drawbacks while saving doctors' time. 

2. Not designed to mitigate risks of airborne transmission of pathogens. Since a disease like COVID-19 is more unique in that airborne transmission is very viable, our system has been designed to reduce this risk of transmission that previous systems did not have to account for. 

Our proposed solution, OxyPure uses existing technology consisting of electrical, mechanical and embedded systems in a modified setting. 

Our system includes a pulse oximeter that continuously measures the blood oxygen saturation level of the patient and sends feedback to the control system. Our control system is equipped with micro-controllers and other modules to supply an adjusted air-oxygen mixture to the inlet of the non-rebreathing mask based on patient’s oxygen saturation needs. 

Once the patient exhales, the exhaled air is channeled through a 3-step disinfection chamber.The 3 stages are heat, UVC light and HEPA filter, explained below:

1. Step 1 - While passing through the chamber, we will increase the relative humidity of the exhaled breath and channel it through heat(400K) chambers. 

2. Step 2 - As the air cools down from the previous step, it will pass through a section flooded with UVC light. 

3. Step 3 - For last measure, it will flow through a HEPA filter and be released into the environment as purified air.

1. Pulse oximeters are widely used to measure oxygen saturation levels (SpO2) of patients in hospitals all over the world.

2. Micro-controllers are also a proven technology for embedded control systems used since the '80s.

3. UVC light is commonly used for disinfecting medical gears and equipment from viruses and pathogens in labs and hospitals. Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation inactivates the pathogens by damaging their nucleic acid structure. 

3. HEPA filters and heat chambers are widely used in HVAC as well as air purifier systems. HEPA filters can capture up to 99% of the airborne particles down to 0.3 microns.

Actions: OxyPure adaptively optimizes the flow of oxygen, automating the process of routine check. In addition, any pathogens in the exhaled air is disinfected in three stages.

Immediate outcomes: Improve the hospital's efficiency and improve workplace security in handling COVID-19 patients by disinfecting the patient’s exhaled breath as well as freeing up time for health professionals to attend to more critical patients.

Long-term outcomes: Patients having any type of respiratory diseases (ARDS, pneumonia, COVID19, SARS, etc.) with mild to moderate breathing problems can be effectively taken care of at both hospitals and homes.

This is a difficult projection to make at present since the most immediate addressable population would depend on the rate of infections globally from COVID-19. At present the data and modeling around this is still in flux. 

We hope that OxyPure can bring transformational impact for millions of lives.

Impact goals: Better services to support patients with ARDS, pneumonia, including COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms requiring oxygen supply by creating a safer and patient-centric system. 

One year goal:

1. Complete prototype 
2. Clinical trials (in Bangladesh)
3. After successful clinical trials, approach towards partnerships with medical device manufacturers to bring product to market. 

Five year goal:

1. Develop more advanced systems using IOT and mobile applications.
2. Activating our product within doctors’ communities across different geographies to double down word-of-mouth growth.

- Financial: We are in need of grants and seed funding for carrying out clinical trials.

- Technical: Owing to COVID-19 lockdowns globally, some supply chains may be impacted, leading to difficulties in sourcing all components needed in adequate amounts to scale. 

Financial: We are hoping to solve this through active efforts on fundraising vehicles such as: 

1. Grants
2. Seed funding
3. VC funding to do clinical testing in Bangladeshi hospitals with cooperation from doctors.

Technical:

Our major concern is the disruption in the supply-chain of our desired components in order to build the systems at scale. We hope this will be mitigated in the near future as some cities start to open up. 

After successful clinical trials, we plan to talk to medical device companies (e.g. Medtronics, GE Medical, Phillips Medical, etc.) to figure our marketing and distribution. 

There are currently 5 members working on this team.