A soft pressure

The group’s implantable ventilator configuration outgrew Roche’s past work on an assistive gadget for the heart.Roche created a cardiac sleeve while he was a graduate student at Harvard University that could be worn around the heart to relieve pressure and provide support as the organ pumps.

She and her research team now work at MIT and discovered that other muscles and tissues could benefit from the same soft, robotic assistance.We wondered, “What’s another big muscle that pumps frequently and sustains life?”The diaphragm, according to Roche.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, when the use of conventional ventilators increased in tandem with the number of cases, the team began investigating designs for an implantable ventilator.Positive pressure is created when air is pushed down through a patient’s central airways and into the lungs by those ventilators.