TUPELO, Miss. (AP) - Growing up in Tupelo, Charles “Mit” Robertson wasn’t particularly handy at fixing things. But he was the kind of kid who liked to take clocks apart to see how they worked.
So it should come as no surprise that when Robertson, 45, saw a potential need for ventilators in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, he decided to build some in his garage.
Robertson, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, has built about 170 ventilators of his own design to use in the event of a shortage, doubling the Medical Center’s supply.
“I was watching the coronavirus spread in China during January, then by the time February came and cases started increasing in South Korea, Italy and Iran, I knew it was coming to the United States, and that if enough people became sick, we may not have enough ventilators,” he said.
Robertson, the son of Barbara and Skip Robertson of Tupelo, is a 1993 graduate of Tupelo High School. He earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He has two children, Nate, who is 14, and Cecilia, 11, and lives in Ridgeland with his partner, who is an airline pilot.
“My goal was to have something that could be built rapidly and made with parts you could get in any small city in America,” Robertson said. “That way, if somebody saw their hospital was going to be overwhelmed with a need for ventilators, they could make some of them a few days ahead.”
The Robertson Ventilators are made from garden hose sections, adapters, valves, a solenoid and a lamp timer, all of which can be bought at a hardware store or online. The parts cost less than $100 per ventilator and can be assembled in less than an hour. The ventilator works when plugged into the standard oxygen line in a hospital room, meaning it can be used in more locations than a standard ventilator.
Robertson got his parts at Home Depot and from amazon.com. He put together his first ventilator in early March.
“We attached it to a balloon and it deflated it – it was doing just what I wanted it to do,” he said. “The device got more refined over the next couple of weeks.”
Ventilators work by pushing air into the lungs, then stopping for an exhale, then repeating as needed. Robertson’s design controls air flow using an on-off valve similar to what you’d find in a landscape water feature or lawn sprinkler controlled by the timer and the solenoid.
“This device is for extreme use situations during a pandemic,” Robertson said. “We would only be using these ventilators if every single hospital ventilator is in use and we have patients that are about to die because of that.”
In these cases, it could be used as a “bridge therapy,” where a patient uses Robertson’s ventilator for several hours while waiting on the hospital ventilator to become available.
Robertson said his ventilators have been tested on pigs, but have not yet been used on people.
“We haven’t had calls to use one on a patient at this point because we have all the ventilators we need, but I am fully confident they will move oxygen into the lungs and back out,” Robertson said. “I am just hopeful there won’t be a need for them.”
Dr. Richard Summers, associate vice chancellor for research at UMMC, said the ventilators have passed rigorous testing in research laboratories under broad physiologic conditions and lung pathologies. He is now working to get the ventilators approved for use. Sometimes referred to as compassionate use, this designation would allow the Medical Center to use them as approved medical devices if they must.
“We have filed for an Emergency Use Authorization with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who have indicated their interest in these ventilators,” Summers said. “I think this effort represents the independent ‘can do’ attitude and ingenuity of our physicians and scientists to confront this crisis in the service of the people of Mississippi.”
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