IIT Gandhinagar students build affordable, portable CPR machine

Picture for representation (Image: Wikimedia)

India is the unfortunate capital of coronary diseases globally and reports about 80 deaths due to cardiac arrest per hour on an average.

Two main reasons behind this staggering number are the dearth of life-saving equipment and the cost of treatment, which is unaffordable for most.

Attempting to bring this number down, Kratika Bhagtani and Karthik Karvaje -- two students of IIT Gandhinagar-- developed a portable CPR (Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation) machine.

The students believe their invention is what the Indian healthcare system needs at the moment.

According to a report by The Better India, the portable CPR machine is compact. It can give chest compressions at proper depth and optimal rate, which helps ventilate the lungs and keep the airway open; it also indicates the compression rate.

Hardly the size of a laptop, the machine weighs less than 1kg. It is also very simple to use and requires just its handle to be rotated. An electric motor can be attached to the machine if any user wants the manual operation to be replaced.

While they built the machine at an expense of Rs 6,000, if commercialised, it could be worth Rs 10,000 as against the Rs 4,00,000-worth CPR device found in hospitals.

Kratika, 20, hails from Rajasthan’s Kota and was inspired by her father who is a doctor. She said she had first thought of coming up with such a device when her father discussed with her about patients who died on their way to the hospital, in cases where the ambulance took too long to respond.

Karthik, 22, is a native of Karnataka. He said that reducing the number of deaths reported was his prime motivation. He believes proper CPR can save the lives of many who die of cardiac arrest in India. Many people die because of the lack of know-how on how to properly give a CPR. Therefore, they wanted to design a machine that can be operated with minimal training.

The students developed this device as a part of the Invent@IITGN programme held at the educational institute. The six-week summer course was held in India for the first time in 2018, and it was organised by professors Alan Wolf and Eric Lima, who founded the original US programme.

Twenty select students from various IITs in the country took part in it. They had a budget of up to Rs 50,000 to innovate, build, and test a prototype. The best inventions won prizes.

For the portable CPR machine, Kratika and Karthik won Rs 1 lakh of prize money.