Councils of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) at Pune have tied up with Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) to produce medical devices in order to fight against the coronavirus outbreak.
Under the joint venture, CSIR-NCL’s Venture Centre’s incubatee BMEK has developed hand-held digital IR thermometer which is an important component of measures to mitigate Coronavirus outbreak. Mobile phone or power banks can be used as a power source.
“The design of IR thermometers is available open source where in the complete know-how with mass manufacturing ready hardware and software design will be available to manufacturers across India for free,” the Department of Science & Technology (DST) said. It adds, “This is an effort to enable a large number of manufacturers to manufacture the thermometers and cater to their local demands.” Now the production is being scaled up in partnership with BEL and about 100 prototype units will be made for pilot distribution and testing at TUV Rheinland India Pvt Ltd, Bangalore.
One of the critical needs of COVID-19 patients is the need to meet the oxygen requirements due to their lungs being compromised. Oxygen enrichment unit (OEUs) to increase the oxygen concentration from the ambient air of 21-22 per cent to 38-40 per cent have been developed by CSIR-NCL and Genrich Membranes, a start-up innovation venture. OEU is hollow fiber membrane bundles for separation and filtration of ambient air to produce enriched oxygen for patients in home and hospital settings. The prototype units are ready at Pune and will be sent to TUV Rheinland India, Bangalore for testing/validation, DST said. About 10 OEU machines will be assembled by NCL BEL in Pune and after the trials, scale up will be done.
