Industrial Automation Magazine India

Indian Railways Develops Low Cost Ventilator Prototype

Published on : Thursday 09-04-2020

The prototype has been named ‘Jeevan’ and now, the Indian Council of Medical Research or ICMR will conduct the final testing of the prototype.

Indian Railways’ Rail Coach Factory (RCF) in Kapurthala has developed a prototype of a ventilator named ‘Jeevan’ to be used in isolation wards or quarantine facilities on train coaches across India. This will help overcome the shortage of ventilators at a time when the country and the world is facing the Covid-19 crisis. This holds particular significance as it is the first such development to come from a manufacturing unit directly and was developed in a week’s time. The ICMR is to begin testing the device soon. Ravinder Gupta, General Manager of RCF says that the cost without the compressor should be under 10,000 Rupees, a fraction of the price of a standard ventilator. The prototype has been named ‘Jeevan’ and now, the Indian Council of Medical Research or ICMR will conduct the final testing of the prototype. The test and results by ICMR will affirm whether the ventilator will be put for production across the Indian Railways network. The in-house medical professionals of Rail Coach Factory have tested the prototype and given the approval for the same.

Indian Railways engineers, plant designers and a group of medical professionals from RCF hospital are behind the development of this device. The intellectual property rights of the ventilator will belong to RCF.

RCF, Kapurthala is one of India’s premier production units which manufactures the technologically superior LHB or Linke Hoffman Busche train coaches. The railways officials, designers and engineers are working on the preparation of the technical documents for ICMR’s perusal. By the coming week, the prototype will be sent to ICMR for testing according to instructions from the Railway Board.