Teams in Paraguay progress rapidly with local CPAP manufacture

Our UCL Ventura team has been working with teams in Paraguay since April to support their local manufacture of CPAP devices.

Our collaborators in Paraguay, a consortium formed by the companies Smart City Tech, CIE Paraguay and Linde/Praxair, have successfully manufactured their own CPAP devices and are hospital testing these to help support the fight against COVID19 in Paraguay.

The device was developed using the designs and detailed instructions that UCL licensed at no cost to the team. These designs have been given to over 1950 teams in 105 countries, and many of these other countries have now secured regulatory approval and using these in hospitals across the globe. The CPAPs are also being used in over 130 NHS hospitals in the UK.

Niels Birbaumer, Director General of Smart City Tech, said: ¨It’s been quite a ride since we made our first contact with UCL back in April. 

We live in an underdeveloped country in South America with an historically poor public health system and long bureaucracy processes. This meant we’ve often been dependent on other countries for medical supplies, particularly devices like CPAPs.

Our team is committed to manufacturing locally and building our countries’ ability in this space. We believe this project will be the beginning of the change we want to see in our country.

Through our testing of the devices we have made, we hope to show the people what this is able to do and how much it could help our health system.

We’re truly grateful to have the possibility to work with UCL and Mercedes-AMG HPP for such an important cause, and we couldn’t be more thankful for all the help we’ve been getting over the past months. I cannot emphasise this enough: what UCL has achieved in the UK and around the world is what humanity is all about – helping each other without expecting anything in return. Together, we can create a real impact across the globe.”