LET’S hear it for the amateur inventor. By fixing a disposable syringe to a cannibalised loudspeaker, Frank Løvstad of Stokke in Norway has found a safer way to help newborn babies who are experiencing breathing difficulties. As many as 2 per cent of all newborns need help to breathe. But their delicate lungs can be injured if too much air is pumped into them using a conventional, hand-operated balloon pump. If this happens, the infant may need several more days on a ventilator to recover.
So Løvstad, an electronics enthusiast and former paramedic, decided to design an electronic valve that sits between the balloon and the mouthpiece and which reacts quickly to vent potentially dangerous excess pressure. For his prototype he used nothing more complicated than a disposable syringe with a piece of metal fixed to the plunger, which was moved back and forth by placing it inside a loudspeaker coil.
His idea worked: the syringe reacted within a millisecond to an excess pressure signal from a sensor in the mouthpiece. Now, with help from Norway’s research organisation SINTEF, his design is being refined for clinical use with balloon pumps. “It’s essentially the same principle as the loudspeaker I used originally,” says Løvstad.
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