Regina man builds ventilator prototype from spare parts

With more spare time to tinker in his garage after a day of working at home, one Regina man has come up with a prototype for a simple ventilator system.

Harry Onagi worked as a respiratory therapist through the 1990s before changing careers. Back then, he started working on a cheap basic ventilator system with the idea it could be used to treat patients in developing countries with limited access to modern medical equipment.

When life got busy between a young family and work, he gave up on the design.

“So I threw it in the crawlspace for 20 years and then (COVID-19) hit and it started getting closer. First it was just Asia, then it was Europe, then it was on the west coast and then on both coasts (of Canada) and then I started seeing the predicted numbers of people needing ICU beds and possibly ventilators, and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’d better haul this out and have a look at it,’ and I came up with this,” Onagi said.

Onagi isn’t under any illusions that his machine will save the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. He simply thought it might help as a last resort in some areas.

Harry Onagi is a former respiratory therapist in Regina who built a simple working prototype model of a ventilator in his garage. (Adriana Christianson/980 CJME)

He built a whole new ventilator model by sourcing parts from an automotive shop, along with an old and slightly damaged manual bagging unit — a gold standard piece of equipment in hospitals.

The bags are normally used in hospitals or ambulances to pump oxygen into the lungs of people who are struggling to breathe or to temporarily ventilate those who depend on mechanical ventilators.

Onagi stuck to the basic principle that those manual bagging units can be put to use to help someone breathe.

“Rather than have a complex system, you really just need something that can compress the bag, hopefully at a controlled volume and a controlled rate,” Onagi explained.

“You can use other techniques to control the amount of oxygen and back pressure, but for an emergency situation where you don’t have your normal ventilators, I thought this might do.”

According to his explanation online, Onagi’s model was built at a cost of about $200. That bought a linear pneumatic actuator, a couple of needle valves to control the speed of extension and retraction of the actuator, and a barbecue rotisserie motor for turning the wheel that has the fins spaced at appropriate intervals (for the right breath rate) to activate a switch.

The switch flips the solenoid to activate the actuator, which presses the bagging unit. There also are a handful of other small things that assist in some way or another.

Onagi knows his ventilator doesn’t compare with the advanced technical ventilators used in hospitals — those ones are controlled by valves and computers — but he posted the prototype and an explanation on YouTube as a way of sharing knowledge with places that may be in more desperate need.

“It doesn’t appear to be too big a problem in Saskatchewan yet, but other parts of the world like Italy, they’re already having to triage people because they don’t have enough equipment, and I’m hoping that if someone can make use of this idea and possibly improve it and then put it to use, then they don’t have to make that decision — they can both have it,” Onagi said.

“It won’t be a Cadillac. It will be more like a ladder ride, but it’s better than nothing.”