Executive Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the world’s attention the valuable work carried out by intensive care unit (ICU) clinicians across the globe. Without mechanical ventilation therapy, many more patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), from COVID-19 complications and other causes, would have sadly passed away.
Given the equipment clinicians have available to inform ventilation therapy, their success in treating patients is even more impressive. Currently, doctors and nurses have little way of understanding the impact of mechanical ventilation on the different parts of a patient’s lung. They rely on simple written formulas, experience, and, in many cases, trial and error to inform treatment.
However, ARDS care could be about to enter a new era thanks to a pioneering research program from Ebenbuild, which is fusing patient data with sophisticated machine learning algorithms and physics-based computer simulation. By better understanding the human lung, physicians could personalize ventilation therapy to bring many more ARDS patients to a full recovery.