Aequs, an aerospace precision engineering and manufacturing company, has launched AQovent, a medical-grade, low-cost and mass-produced mechanical resuscitator.

Arvind Melligeri, Chairman and Managing Director, told BusinessLine that the company has signed a licence agreement with the University of Illinois for the concept design for the resuscitators. AQovent is an oxygen-driven emergency ventilator that can provide constant-flow, pressure-cycled ventilation automatically to patients in respiratory distress.

Melligeri said as the country battles the Covid-19 pandemic, the collaboration with the University of Illinois was initiated to contest one of the main challenges in the current medical system. The challenge is the extensive reliance on a small segment of suppliers for specialised, proprietary, mass-produced resuscitators. This dependence has created a wide gap in the supply-demand model of these speciality products, he said.

Committed deliveries

The design of AQovent lends itself to a level of scalability, enabling production ramp-up to meet the surge in demand, he said. The company has committed to deliver 2,000 units per month to start with and is looking at a phased distribution to government hospitals, health authorities, government e-sourcing platforms, ambulance services, and NGO's in tier II & tier III markets across Karnataka. The distribution plan for AQovent follows a not-for-profit model.

Following the surge in demand, the company intends to scale up its production to 10,000 units a month. Aequs has also stepped up to leverage its ‘Aerospace’ and ‘Consumer’ Divisions’ capabilities in its vertically integrated ecosystem at the Special Economic Zone in Belagavi, Karnataka, to manufacture AQovent. A dedicated team of cross-functional engineers at Aequs have pooled in their collective expertise to manufacture AQovent.

AQovent is engineered to suit Indian conditions without compromising its functional integrity and to enable the ease of manufacturing and reduce the lead time, thereby making it conducive for mass production. AQovent operates directly of oxygen, making it ideal for deployment in non-electrified locations (also in an ambulance as it is portable) and in situations with limited medical facilities.

As one of the leading manufacturing partners of global OEMs such as Airbus, Boeing, Collins Aerospace, SAFRAN, among others, Aequs specialises in high-level precision engineering and ensures ‘zero-defect’ product quality. This in-built potential has been leveraged ably in the manufacturing of AQovent, making it of superior quality and safe to use. To ensure readiness for the market, AQovent has undergone multiple rounds of pre-clinical and clinical trials, including endurance, performance, and product calibration testing.

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