Care home BiPAP breathing aid for early stage intervention

在英国，欧盟和全球范围内，大量与COVID相关的死亡发生在养老院，其中老年居民感染疾病，但由于缺乏能力或后期医疗干预（如有创通气）的预期临床结果不佳而无法住院。近年来的研究表明，在流感型呼吸系统疾病的早期阶段应用双水平气道正压通气（BiPAP）呼吸支持可以减少相当大比例的患者向ARDS的进展，BiPAP设备类似于用户操作的持续气道正压通气设备（例如睡眠呼吸暂停机器）本项目的目的是创造一种适合在英国护理家庭中使用的低成本BiPAP设备在2020年期间降低因COVID-19感染导致的死亡率，并提供有效的早期干预措施，以降低随后年度流感季节的死亡率。

A significant number of COVID-related deaths in the UK, EU and worldwide occur in care homes where elderly residents contract the disease but cannot be hospitalised due to a lack of capacity or poor expected clinical outcomes from later stage medical interventions such as invasive ventilation. Recent studies have shown that the application of bi-level positive airway pressure (BiPAP) respiratory support for patients at an early stage of influenza-type respiratory diseases reduces progression to ARDS for a significant proportion of patients.A BiPAP device is similar to a user-operated continuous positive airway pressure device (e.g. a sleep apnea machine) but provides two pressure levels to reduce breathing effort and assist exhalation.The objective of this project is to create a low cost BiPAP device suitable for deployment in UK care homes to reduce mortality due to COVID-19 infections during 2020, and to provide an effective early stage intervention to reduce mortality in subsequent annual flu seasons.