HomePublicationLa CañadaLocal JPL Physicist Joins Pandemic Fight by Creating Life-Saving Device

Local JPL Physicist Joins Pandemic Fight by Creating Life-Saving Device

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory made headlines recently after announcing its scientists — in just 37 days — have developed a high-pressure ventilator prototype tailored for coronavirus patients which was given the green light by doctors at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, one of the epicenters of the disease in the United States.
JPL, based in La Cañada Flintridge, is well-known as home base to many local engineers, physicists and researchers who work there, and one resident in particular served as a critical member on the JPL team that created the life-saving device, called VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally). The device has been created to free up the nation’s limited supply of traditional ventilators with the intent they may be used on patients with the most severe COVID-19 symptoms.
When Arbi Karapetian heard about the “NASA@Work” challenge issued to its employees on April 1 (and to which NASA said it received hundreds of submitted ideas), he heeded the call, diving head first into what he knows best — working to solve problems.

The prototype ventilator

“We build spacecraft so all of our terminology is geared toward building rockets and rovers, you know? None of us are doctors or medical device manufacturers so for us the learning curve was pretty vertical,” Karapetian said from his home office, which consists of a hastily-arranged Costco picnic table in his living room so that the JPL section manager can work remote, his 7- and 9-year-old children underfoot.
“But when you know that people are lying in hospitals around the world, dying from this disease and some from not having enough of these ventilator devices, there was an enormous burden on the team that really translated to an unbelievable amount of motivation and drive.”
The JPL team, responsible for the design, build, testing and delivery of the VITAL ventilator system, grew organically from a handful to about 60, working around the clock to free up the nation’s limited supply of traditional ventilators so they may be used on patients with the most severe COVID-19 symptoms. Karapetian said he and his colleagues set out with the same ideal driving the medical community, to “do no harm,” but referring to not wanting to obstruct traditional medical device companies already struggling to find hard-to-get parts.
“We knew we had to use very simple parts from suppliers that weren’t currently being used by other ventilator manufacturers, we didn’t want to potentially get in their way, so to speak, I knew we couldn’t use the same switches for example,” said Karapetian, who took on the role of system manager and production team lead.
Plus, he said, they wanted parts readily available within the U.S., since at the time, the international supply chain had been crippled by the pandemic and the measures countries took to slow the spread of the disease.
To start, the team needed a solid understanding of the hardware behind a ventilator or a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine, typically used to treat sleep apnea, and possible parts replacement options that could create the same, powerful capability. There were a lot of leaf blowers and vacuum cleaners taken apart in the process, Karapetian noted, laughing. That was before they started collaborating with expert pulmonologists who “could speak our technical lingo” with the team.
Once told they would need to forge ahead using 100% oxygen, they began to comb the staff box at work: “One of the amazing things of working at JPL is you have some of the world’s experts at your fingertips,” he added.
Ultimately, a device was created that provides a considerable amount of capability with a robust design, reduced parts and easy manufacturing that meets the targeted needs of a COVID-19 patient (“That was our guiding principal, we were constantly asking ‘Who is the patient here?’” he said).
According to JPL, VITAL can be built faster and maintained more easily than a traditional ventilator, and is composed of far fewer parts, many of which are currently available to potential manufacturers through existing supply chains. Its flexible design means it also can be modified for use in field hospitals being set up in convention centers, hotels, and other high-capacity facilities across the country and around the globe.
JPL Director Michael Watkins praised his team for the collaborative effort.
“We specialize in spacecraft, not medical-device manufacturing,” Watkins said in a statement. “But excellent engineering, rigorous testing and rapid prototyping are some of our specialties. When people at JPL realized they might have what it takes to support the medical community and the broader community, they felt it was their duty to share their ingenuity, expertise and drive.”
Next up, NASA is seeking expedited Food and Drug Administration approval for the device via an emergency use authorization, a fast-track approval process developed for crisis situations that takes just days rather than years. To get input from a gold-standard medical facility, JPL delivered a prototype of the device to the Human Simulation Lab in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Mount Sinai for additional testing.
Like all ventilators, VITAL requires patients to be sedated and an oxygen tube inserted into their airway to breathe. The new device wouldn’t replace current hospital ventilators, which can last years and are built to address a broader range of medical issues. Instead, VITAL is intended to last three to four months and is tailored for COVID-19 patients in critical care.
“Intensive care units are seeing COVID-19 patients who require highly dynamic ventilators,” said Dr. J.D. Polk, NASA’s chief health and medical officer. “The intention with VITAL is to decrease the likelihood patients will get to that advanced stage of the disease and require more advanced ventilator assistance.”
The Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA, will offer a free license for VITAL and currently is reaching out to the commercial medical industry to find manufacturers for the device.

Photos courtesy NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
A few members of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory team that created a high-pressure ventilator tailored to COVID-19 patients in just 37 days pose with the prototype.

In the meantime, Karapetian and his team will continue to go back to the drawing board, albeit remotely, as reviews and suggestions continue to help them improve the device.
“Some of the oddest information is the most helpful. For example, some medical personnel are saying ‘Why did you make it blue? We’re used to red… it’s throwing us off,’ so we are incorporating all of those inputs to finalize [the compressor design],” said Karapetian, who estimates that it will be ready to manufacture by the end of May, barring any technical issues.
Turning a quality product around by that time lies squarely on the team leaders’ shoulders, said the physicist/engineer, whose day job at JPL is the deputy section manager for the Payload and Small Spacecraft Mechanical Engineering Section.
Although he’ll be working remote — Karapetian suffers from reduced lung capacity due to an accident and has taken strict adherence to the “Safer at Home” credence — he’ll be on call as often as need be to get the job done.
He’ll also be substitute teaching his young children, who are students at Palm Crest Elementary, while focusing on other ways to help to end this pandemic.
“I have to admit, it’s been really nice to see my wife and kids all the time, and working on this project has helped me keep my mind off some of my personal risk factor, it’s been sort of a blessing throughout all of this,” he said.

Outlook Celebrating Charity

Most Popular

[bsa_pro_ad_space id=3]

27