Ventilator Wear Estimation Using Component-Specific Usage Factors
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current ventilators lack effective methods for determining wear and maintenance intervals, relying solely on usage time, which can lead to inefficient resource utilization and increased costs, while compromising operation safety and environmental protection.
Innovation Solution
A device and method utilizing a control unit and usage clock to detect and offset usage duration with various wear factors, determining overall and component-specific wear, and generating maintenance notifications and alarms to optimize maintenance timing and resource management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If maintenance is based solely on usage time, then the maintenance scheduling is simple, but the operation safety decreases and resource utilization becomes inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms the single parameter of usage time into multiple wear factors including usage time, treatment pressures, respiratory flow, respiratory rate, and oxygen concentration. The control unit calculates an overall wear factor by combining these parameters, enabling more accurate maintenance scheduling that reflects actual component degradation rather than just elapsed time.
2Reliability
If maintenance is performed more frequently based on conservative time intervals, then operation safety is maintained, but resource consumption and costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously monitors multiple operating parameters and feeds this information back to the control unit, which dynamically adjusts maintenance scheduling based on actual wear accumulation. This feedback mechanism allows maintenance to be performed only when necessary, avoiding premature maintenance and the associated resource waste while ensuring safety through real-time wear assessment.
3Measurement precision
If multiple wear factors are calculated for different components, then maintenance precision is improved, but the computational complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the ventilator into distinct components (turbine, humidifier, water chamber, air filter, hose, patient interface, electronics, power supply, accumulator, sensors, measurement cells, valves) and calculates wear factors specifically for each component based on relevant operating parameters. This segmentation allows precise wear tracking for each component without requiring a single complex overall calculation, distributing the computational burden across multiple simpler component-level assessments.
Data Source
AI summary
Device for determining a usage intensity of a ventilator, having at least one control unit and a usage clock, which is designed and configured to detect the duration of the usage of the ventilator. The device is characterized in that the control unit is configured and designed to offset the duration of the usage of the ventilator with at least one wear factor, in order to determine at least one wear therefrom.