Inflatable Vest Respirator: Part 2
My ability to breathe naturally is highly compromised due to my ALS. I am also an inventor and I have turned my attention to creating a device that helps me breathe easier. I call my invention the Inflatable Vest Respirator (IVR), and you can read about it in a previous post I made on Medium.
The key innovations of the IVR are that this device can be worn like a vest and is a negative pressure ventilator as opposed to a positive pressure ventilator. The action of the IVR causes the lungs to expand and suck air in rather than having air blown into the lungs as is normally the case today, using a positive pressure ventilator.
Yesterday, I filed a second patent application on the IVR that has to do with a key-enabling technology. The mechanism by which the vest works is that there are elastomeric tubes surrounding the chest and when those tubes are inflated they get longer. The length of these tubes increases as the vest expands, and a low-level vacuum between the vest and the skin pulls the chest wall out so as to create negative pressure ventilation. This is similar to an iron lung except far more portable, affordable, and discreet.
The energy efficiency of the IVR is much higher than existing methods of providing ventilation. This will make it more portable than the only competitive negative pressure ventilation technology, the Biphasic Cuirass Ventilator (BCV).
At present, I use a positive pressure ventilator, the Trilogy 100 from Philips Respironics. I noted with interest from a documentary about Stephen Hawking that this is the same respirator he used. That ventilator contains two batteries, and I am able to be out and about for up to seven hours. I believe that my new design will at least achieve that level of portability in a negative pressure ventilator.
I am excited about the partners I have drawn into this venture already. Most of them I will keep confidential, but I can mention my brother Robert. He is an MD, an emergency room doctor, and a great advisor. He’s very much improved my original concept for the IVR.
I did not understand the biology of the lungs. Robert, on the other hand, has had to treat sucking wounds and he knew about the pleural sac in a sort of visceral way. In order to save the life of someone with a sucking wound, the ER doctor must evacuate the space between the inner and outer pleural membranes. Once you do that the person can probably breathe again.
Robert immediately saw that my original idea that the vest would be adhered to the skin could be improved. He suggested instead to use the bodies own method of linking the lungs to the thoracic cavity to the lungs via a mild vacuum.
On a personal note, I am more effective now as an inventor and an entrepreneur than I have ever been before in my life. Although my body is failing, my mind is sharper than ever. During the last week, I filed two patent applications with the help of my partner and CIO for Rethink Technologies, Jake Wenzel.
