Hyderabad, NFAPost: In the backdrop of the Coronavirus pandemic and the increasing number of Covid-19 cases, governments around the world have realised the huge deficit of ventilator supplies. LEVEN Medical, a started with India-Dutch collaboration and mentored by Hyderabad Security Cluster, has come up with innovative ventilator to combat the pandemic.
Across the world, there is a global backorder of critical care ventilators capable of supporting patients fighting the coronavirus. The demand for ventilators continues to surge as the coronavirus spreads at a rapid pace globally.
According to experts, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, India had 40,000 ventilators and around 14,000 ventilators have been allocated by the government for Covid-19. However, with the current surge in the coronavirus cases, it is predicted that India may require 1,00,000 ventilators by August which can further spike up to 5,00,000 by October or November 2020.
Healthcare requirement
LEVEN Medical conceived three months ago and developed SMART Ventilators that are integrated with AI & ML, with the help of experts from across the globe that have brought to the table a culmination of inputs by scientists, medical experts, innovators and engineers.
Three models of the LEVEN ventilators including – SMART Ventilator, C5 Covid-19 Ventilator and ICU Ventilator – were launched by Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary IT and Industries Department, Anjana Sinha, IPS, IG South Sector CISF, Prashant Gupta and Dr Zaki Qureshey.
Speaking about the motivation behind developing a 360-degree solution to the ongoing pandemic and healthcare need, CEO HSC and founder and CEO of LEVEN Medical said Zaki Qureshey with the progression of the Covid-19 pandemic, the acute shortage of medical infrastructure in the country was brought to the fore and with it we saw some heart wrenching news of human tragedy.
“As a response, we started developing the smart ventilator and kept on adding features to bring about solutions to emerging problems as the pandemic unfolded. For instance, when we saw that doctors and medical professionals were few in number and hesitant to go near-critical patients, we thought of adding a remote monitoring feature into the machine,” said founder and CEO of LEVEN Medical said Zaki Qureshey.
State-of-the-art ventilators
Speaking at the virtual launch, Government of Telangana Principal Secretary IT & Industries Jayesh Ranjan I.A.S said on the occasion of the Independence Day, the honorable Prime Minister spoke about the Atmanirbhar campaign and got a lot more direction into it.
“What is happening today is a very good example of Atmanirbhar India. When the Covid -19 pandemic broke out in March, our government also realized that ventilators will be very important in controlling the spread of the pandemic and we realized that we are in a huge deficit,” said Government of Telangana Principal Secretary IT & Industries Jayesh Ranjan I.A.S.
Local manufacturing
Government of Telangana Principal Secretary IT & Industries Jayesh Ranjan I.A.S said it is an eyeopener that there is hardly any local manufacturing happening and there was a mad scramble to procure ventilators.
“We also tried to import ventilators. At that time each ventilator’s cost was around Rs 5 lakh. Given the ingenuity of the Indian innovators, there is a tenfold decrease in price now,” said Government of Telangana Principal Secretary IT & Industries Jayesh Ranjan I.A.S.
“While lot of innovation of basic ventilators has happened, what LEVEN has done is a step ahead of what has been happening in the last 3-4 months in terms of this indigenous development. While others are just ventilator support, but the advantage of LEVEN it has also brought in a very strong dose of technology into it and the fact that there is a AI layer which also helps capture lot of patient data & user data. This data is utilized in taking decisions about medical intervention that gives an edge over other regular ventilators,” he added.
The Principal Secretary said tye LEVEN ventilators also help doctors take decisions on the patient’s condition as they use Artificial Intelligence.
“While others are just ventilator support, you can breathe better by using ventilators which are available now but the advantage of LEVEN Ventilators is besides respiratory support, it also gives insights to doctors and medical staff to take informed decisions. There is strong technology input with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and this something very momentous as the Prime Minister has announced the National Digital Health Mission. This innovation is coming at a very opportune time,” said Government of Telangana Principal Secretary IT & Industries Jayesh Ranjan I.A.S.
“This is the first of its kind intelligent ventilator. This kind of technology perhaps will also give insight into how the National Digital Health Mission will be created. All in all, it’s a very useful innovation and I am glad, that Hyderabad remains a hotbed of healthcare related innovation. The fact that this innovation comes out of Hyderabad, makes us feel very proud,” Rajan added.
A 360-degree solution
Founder and CEO of LEVEN Medical said Zaki Qureshey said with the instrument a doctor can monitor and attend to a patient in case of an emergency even while he is having his lunch or has reached back home.
“Then we added a tracking software to allow contact tracing and monitoring of patients. The product has developed and integrated 10 different functions into the system. While our ventilators and the proprietary software can be integrated into the hospital management system and into an entire state’s healthcare system, these have been designed keeping in mind the post Covid scenario too,” he added.
Robust innovation
Speaking at the launch, CISF IG South Sector and founding member HSC Anjana Sinha IPS said a few of the models of LEVEN Ventilators have been integrated at the NISA hospital.
“Ventilators being manufactured and assembled India is certainly a big breakthrough and LEVEN Medical has done a salutary job at this time. We used our hospital facility at NISA and lot of these prototypes and technologies were checked out at our campus. It is a very very robust innovation which is affordable, state of art and I think this will be a great asset to the medical fraternity by way of technology,” said CISF IG South Sector and founding member HSC Anjana Sinha IPS.
He also suggested to put some of the ventilators to the government facilities to see the viability and it is going to be a huge technology asset to our country and our neighbours.
Key features
The LEVEN C5 Covid-19 Ventilator is priced around 75,000/- with Covid Tracking Software. The basic ventilators available in the market range between Rs 1.5 to Rs 5 lakh and do not come with tracking software.
LEVEN ICU is priced around 9.0 Lacs which has its state of the art Proprietary GUI Software with Remote monitoring feature & COVID tracking software. The corresponding models available in the market cost between Rs 15 lakh – Rs 35 lakh.
LEVEN Smart Ventilator is priced around Rs 12 Lakh which is integrated with AI & ML and tracking Software. Smart is first if it’s kind and a premium product.
AI and ML integration
With AI and ML integrated and supported by a tracking software, these ventilators can not only auto adjust oxygen flow of a patient but can start tracing of all contacts of a critical COVID-19 suspect, places visited over the last 14 days, send automated alerts to authorities at the very moment a patient comes in. They also send alerts to doctors/ nurses and alerts to family members in case of an emergency, allow remote monitoring while the doctor is away from the hospital as well.
The tracking software which is integrated with these get activated right from the time an emergency call is made to the ambulance. It triggers a set of responses like an tracing the nearest hospital with an available bed, connects to the doctor or nurse in advance to update on the criticality of the patient, transmit vital stats to the doctor in advance and allow beginning of treatment right at the beginning of transit.
It guides the driver on the quickest route to the nearest hospital with available infrastructure and specialist doctors. While all of these things happen simultaneously, the ventilator also draws patient data, analyses it, predicts where the next COVID-19 cluster likely to be and sends automated alerts to authorities.
Fouder’s Journey
Founder and CEO of LEVEN Medical said Zaki Qureshey started his entrepreneurial journey by forming E2labs, a cybersecurity firm that designs, develops and delivers information security training and information assurance services that meet military, government, private sector and institutional specifications. E2Labs is one of the Top 100 Private companies in Asia (RED-HERRING).
E2Labs started a fully owed subsidiary venture HomeLand Security Solutions (HLSS) in 2017 to impart cyber training and defence solutions to government bodies including investigating agencies and military.
HLLS is an exclusive authorised India distributor for the world’s largest certification body for information security Mile2, which will provide defence solutions and critical national infrastructure (CNI) solutions. The partnership with Mile2 enables to conduct cybersecurity training programmes and award certificates to personnel trained with investigation agencies in India like National Investigation Agency (NIA), CRPF, BSF and NPA, military, government bodies and private institutions.
