Ashok Leyland, flagship company of the Hinduja group, on Monday announced a slew of initiatives to manufacture and distribute ventilators. The company has developed an in-house intelligent ventilator with its engineers and R&D support. It was approached by both the Union and Tamil Nadu governments to work with and support ventilator makers to help them improve supply chain and output capacity.
In response, the company took a holistic approach to address the entire gamut of requirements in breathing assistance of Covid-19 patients, rather than working with just one party and one product. This included first-mile, mid-range and high-end ICU ventilators required for patients at different stages of disease progression. This approach ensures maximum availability of the machine at optimum costs, the company said in a statement here.
After discussing with various clinical experts and intensivists, the company identified the gap that there was no ready solution available for relevant and robust first-mile ventilation. To fill the gap, a team of 50 ALL engineers have been working since March-end and have now readied a simple yet intelligent ventilator, at a low cost but with all the essential features to aid first-mile ventilation, including the necessary sensors and controllers for volume and pressure monitoring, and safeguards.
The ventilator development is now complete. Testing, certification and clinical trials will conclude in the next few weeks and the mass manufacture of the system will start in May. In the mid-range and high-end ICU ventilator segments, Ashok Leyland is working with two Chennai-based manufacturers — Kriti Kare India, a manufacturer of the ACUvent ventilators since 2014 and Phoenix Medical Systems, a 30-year-old firm which is a market leader in infant, maternal care products, assistive devices, and has developed an adult ventilator to support the nation in this moment of crisis.
Under this arrangement, Ashok Leyland is offering help with component sourcing, supply chain, logistics, manpower for production, planning and in line-quality. This will help both the ventilator manufacturers to overcome the challenge of large-scale production in a short duration.
Vipin Sondhi, MD and CEO of Ashok Leyland, said, “Our sourcing and engineering teams have been working 24X7 on these three projects. We are humbled that our efforts in developing these ventilators and support to ventilator makers, will help the government/s to prepare themselves for the future needs of people needing ventilator care.”
N Saravanan, CTO, Ashok Leyland, said, “With this holistic approach, covering all aspects of patient ventilation, we are able to best utilise our strengths across functions, to make our contribution and help fight the battle against Covid-19. The idea is to offer lean and rapid support as the nation builds its capacities for supporting different patients in various stages of Covid-19, with relevant solutions.”
