When COVID-19 first erupted in March 2020, health authorities warned that a surfeit in severely ill coronavirus patients would overwhelm the system due, in large part, to a lack of ventilation machines – the standard of care for coronavirus patients whose condition deteriorated to pneumonia. In the ensuing months, Prof. Eyal Leshem, Sheba Medical Center’s director of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases, explained that in addition to the shortage of ventilators, one of the most pressing issues was the lack of highly trained ICU staff to monitor patients attached to those devices.
A groundbreaking innovation by Yehonatan Medical now addresses both these crucial issues.
Yehonatan Medical, in collaboration with Professor Ori Efrati, director of the Pediatric Pulmonary Unit at Sheba Medical Center, devised a state-of-the-art, first-of-its-kind ventilation system that can treat between three and five patients simultaneously. That means more patients treated by fewer ICU staff.
“Conventional ventilators, aside from being very costly, are limited in that they can only be used with one patient at a time,” explained Prof. Efrati. “Their capacity factor and programming functions were designed for single-patient use, and there is also the danger of cross contamination.”
The revolutionary ventilation system resolves issues that corona ICU wards have been grappling with as the number of severely ill patients rises.
“We were able to use the relatively simple and inexpensive BipaP non-invasive ventilation machine as the basis for the Advanced Ventilation Technology,” explained Prof. Efrati. “Thanks to the high-power output and built-in disinfecting mechanism, the new system can safely treat three to five patients simultaneously.”
Moreover, a system that can treat multiple patients simultaneously necessitates fewer ICU-trained staff. Thanks to the remote interface, the medical team can monitor patients from a safe distance.
“This tremendous breakthrough is nothing less than a game-changer when it comes to caring for large numbers of corona patients,” Prof. Efrati added.
Dr. Michael Cohen, an engineer and scientist and the founder of Yehonatan Medical who designed the Advanced Ventilation Technology said that “All in all, we’re talking about a system that delivers personalized care in a multi-user format.”
Additional features based on AI technology include: the ability to include a hierarchy and classification of alerts; the ability for automatic parameter correction according to set criteria; respiratory rehabilitation for the patient by adjusting to changes in the patient responsiveness; and more. The streamlined, relatively low-cost system can be implemented in makeshift clinical settings, such as field hospitals, as well as in step-down units within the hospital, in the internal and other wards.
Yehonatan Medical is the medical department of Mofet Etzion, a company that for over two decades has developed various security and military innovations for the IDF and foreign armies. Dr. Cohen has developed dozens of life-saving innovations, including in the area of cardiology in collaboration with world-famous cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons from Israel, the US and Canada.
“Some of the insights for the development of this revolutionary ventilation system were provided by cardiologists who helped us to devise the various accoutrements and sensors,” Dr. Cohen said, making specific mention of Dr. David Adams, professor and system chair of the cardiovascular surgery department at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York; Dr. David Tirone, chief of cardiac surgery at Toronto General Hospital; and Dr. Gideon Cohen, cardiothoracic surgeon at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto. The development of the system itself took place in Israel, marking the first time that an invasive ventilation machine was built in Israel.
The Advanced Ventilation Technology is currently in advanced phase trials at the MSR Medical Simulation Center at Sheba, where it is being tested on artificial lungs, and is expected to be ready for mass marketing in the coming months.