BioMedInnovations’ SuppleVent® Receives FDA Emergency Use Authorization

In June 2020, BioMedInnovations announced that its SuppleVent® emergency ventilator had received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The FDA authorized SuppleVent to provide continuous ventilatory support for adult patients requiring mechanical ventilation when an FDA-cleared ventilator was unavailable due to the pandemic. 

SuppleVent was developed through a collaboration between BioMedInnovations and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), with additional technology and manufacturing partners. The project was conceived during a period of significant concern about ventilator availability and supply-chain constraints, with the team working to develop an emergency ventilator that could be manufactured using readily available components. 

BioMedInnovations brought its experience in precision air and fluid-flow control to the effort. Partner Equilibar contributed back-pressure regulator technology, while BMI worked with LLNL to refine the design and prepare the system for production. The resulting SuppleVent system was designed as a portable emergency ventilator suitable for institutional settings, including hospitals, temporary hospital facilities, and intra-hospital transport. 

The project demonstrated the ability of BMI and its partners to rapidly apply precision flow-control engineering to an urgent medical need. The collaboration would later receive national recognition from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for its technology-transfer and COVID-19 response efforts.