Businesses donate dozens of ventilators to Alberta Health
E-vent nicknamed ‘Bertie’ provides short-term respiratory support
Alberta businesses are donating 200 ventilators, created in part through 3D printing technology, to Alberta Health Services, the government announced Friday.
The ventilators, named Alberta E-vent and nicknamed “Bertie,” are intended to provide shortterm respiratory support, monitoring and treatment for adult patients, and expand capacity so hospitals can devote conventional respirators to patients with more complex needs.
Ian Buchanan, vice-president of technical services at Exergy Solutions, a technology firm based in Calgary, said the company shifted gears over the past weeks from developing technology for the energy sector to come up with a way to put the ventilators together.
“When we first started, we knew we had to do something,” Buchanan said at a Friday news conference. When the COVID -19 pandemic hit, there was a global shortage of ventilators and their components, so the company reached out to partners and started working nights and weekends to come up with a solution.
Suncor Energy provided financial support to make the donation possible, although the value of the donation was not disclosed.
Dr. Braden Manns, associate chief medical officer at Strategic Clinical Networks, said that the province at the end of February was predicting a huge need for ventilators.
“We didn’t know what curve we were on with this pandemic,” Manns said, explaining that since then, personal protective equipment (PPE) has become a more urgent need, but having ventilators on hand is still wise. Exergy has also been printing face shields and manufacturing other PPE.
“So this is just an example of an innovative way we’ve brought people together,” he said.
Teams from the University of Calgary supported the mechanical design and testing of the project. Logican Technologies in Edmonton is doing final assembly of the ventilators. Other companies, including Catch Engineering, PLC Electronic Solutions from Vancouver, Global Power Technologies and Laser Equation were also involved in the collaboration.
“Developed in just six weeks, this is an incredible innovative achievement,” said Health Minister Tyler Shandro, adding the province had up to 350 ventilators dedicated to COVID -19 patients, but has since dropped that to 200.
Whether or not the province will utilize the ventilators will depend on “what the second and future waves look like,” said Shandro.
The 200 ventilators are approved by Health Canada and are expected to be received this week. Exergy and Suncor are exploring the possibility of expanding production to help fight the worldwide COVID -19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, the province has distributed the first 20 million non-medical masks to fast-food partners as part of a drive-thru distribution plan across the province, Shandro said.
There will be a second shipment distributed, potentially through municipal partners, as part of efforts meant to socialize mask-wearing, Shandro said.