CAE Engineers Respond to Ventilator Challenge

A challenge issued by the Montréal General Hospital Foundation and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, backed by a prize of C$200,000, has spurred engineers at flight simulator manufacturer CAE to design a prototype, easy-to-build ventilator.

Ventilators are usedto keep patients’ lungs supplied with oxygen when they are unable to breathe ontheir own and are vital to keeping alive those with the most severe cases of Covid-19. Ventilators have been in short supplyworldwide.

Theunusual project nonetheless fits with a minor part of CAE’s business, producingsimulators for medical training, and they were able to test the prototype ontheir simulation mannequins, which are fitted with simulated lungs.

CAE proposes to build 10,000 ventilators in three months, re-tooling part ofthe manufacturing line; they expect to have hundreds of people workingon the assembly line. A single ventilator will take about five hours to build.

“We’remobilizing the army,” declared Marc St-Hilaire, CAE’s Chief Technology Officer and Vice-Presidentfor Technology and Innovation. “This is a wartime effort, that’s why we’reseeing so much collaboration amongst everyone. We’re not in a competitive mode.We’re all proceeding forward on good faith, wanting to help Canada, wanting tosave our parents, our neighbours, our friends. That’s what motivateseverybody.”

TheCAE design has fewer than 100 parts that cost about $5,000 per unit. CAE hasthe ability to make almost all of the electronics and metal parts in-house –except for the valves that control pressure.

However, St-Hilaire said the effort isshort-term.Making ventilators will “definitely not” be a long-term part of its businessmodel.

A dozen CAE engineers, together withtheir healthcare division’s chief medical officer, who happens to be arespiration specialist, designed the prototype in 11 days.

Thedevice has not yet received Health Canada approval. “We have enough assurancefrom the government that we are proceeding ahead full blast,” St-Hilaire said.The company held a socially distant teleconference with more than 30 officials from the federal government aboutthe prototypeand CAE’s capacity for manufacturingventilators.

Twoother Canada companies are working to building ventilators: Cerebra Health’s “WinnipegVentilator,” designed by Dr. Magdy Younes, updated from a 1990s design usedduring the SARS epidemic, and engine-parts company Linamar, partnered with O-Two Medical Technologies.