According to a statement from Hall & Wilcox, SparkVent has been sent to Pakistan by anaesthetist Dr Hamish Meares this month. Dr Meares worked with friends who were mechanical engineers, industrial designers and mechanics at Sparkhaus, a Newcastle Makerspace, to come up with an original prototype, the statement noted, adding that Dr Duncan Campbell, a retired anaesthetist who designed the Campbell Ventilator, provided further advice, including the idea of using a venturi design, which led to a second prototype.

Hall & Wilcox Newcastle partner Matthew Smith said Hall & Wilcox’s pro bono assistance included setting up a company for the venture, applying for appropriate charitable exemptions and advising on intellectual property issues.

“It’s not often that you get the opportunity to donate your time to a project that could have a profound impact on saving lives in developing countries across the globe,” Mr Smith said.

“It was very fulfilling to work with Newcastle people who had developed this quite novel and pragmatic solution to an immediate problem of the global pandemic.”

Commenting further on the build of SparkVent, Dr Meaures said: “It was crazy at the beginning. We are a small team, all volunteers, and we were just trying to move as fast as we could to design a ventilator that could potentially save lives.”

“Our aim was to make a simple, cheap ventilator that will hopefully get used well beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

“...With a standard ventilator, you need fully functional biomedical departments to keep it running. Originally, I was concentrating on the patients who will end up in an ICU. But putting patients in an ICU bed in developing countries consumes a huge amount of resources.

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“There will be a larger group of patients that will be struggling to breathe but don’t need an ICU bed and they will be most helped by this ventilator.”