After creating a prototype in only 37 days, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has settled on eight United States manufacturers tasked to produce a new ventilator that is tailored for COVID-19 patients.
Those eight manufacturers are:
- Vacumed, a division of Vacumetrics, Inc., based inVentura, California
- Stark Industries, LLC, based inColumbus, Ohio
- MVent, LLC, a division of Minnetronix Medical, based inSt. Paul, Minnesota
- iButtonLink, LLC, based in Whitewater, Wisconsin
- Evo Design, LLC, based in Watertown, Connecticut
- DesignPlex Biomedical, LLC, based in Fort Worth, Texas
- ATRON Group, LLC, based in Dallas, Texas
- Pro-Dex, Inc., based in Irvine, California
JPL is also currently evaluating international manufacturers and has released a list of its approved manufacturers. JPL has received interest from 331 companies (162 in North America) across six continents and 42 countries, with 96 proposals submitted and 17 technical reviewers. Those eight U.S. companies join 13 international manufacturers also licensed to manufacturer VITAL, with those companies from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates.
NASA announced April 23 that JPL’s Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally prototype, or VITAL, passed a critical test at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. It was authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration one week later. From there, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships offered free licensing for VITAL and approached the commercial medical industry to find potential manufacturers for the device. JPL is managed by Caltech.
According to NASA, VITAL is a high-pressure ventilator that uses one-seventh the parts a traditional ventilator does, features a flexible design that enables usage in field hospitals, and is comprised of parts already available in U.S. manufacturing supply chains. Because of that, VITAL’s cost of production is lower and it frees up traditional ventilators for critical COVID-19 patients.
