The Application of Controls in Critical Care Ventilation

The COVID-19 pandemic created immense pressure on the global healthcare industry and its supply chains [18] and focused the spotlight on an essential tool in critical care facilities for treating COVID patients: the ventilator. In April of 2020 the Defense Production Act was invoked to accelerate production in the United States to meet both domestic and foreign needs. Ventilators are medical devices intended for patients suffering acute respiratory distress. Rather than providing respiration, which involves gas exchange at the alveolar level, ventilators facilitate the necessary first step in the chain of respiratory life support, getting breathing gas into the lung when the patient is unable to do that on their own.