Cohealo announced today that it intends to add customers to its national ventilator sharing network to help health systems monitor capacity and mobilize ventilators to hospitals that need them most.
The Boston-based company’s effort is in response to a shortage of ventilators as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several companies have taken it upon themselves to manufacture more ventilators to address the growing need, while the FDA has also started to relax some of its enforcements on ventilators.
U.S. hospitals have about 160,000 ventilators, with only an additional 12,700 in the national stockpile, according to a report by the New York Times. Meanwhile, models are projecting a need for more than 250,000 ventilators as the nation navigates through the outbreak.
“The time for sharing is now,” Cohealo CEO Dr. Todd Rothenhaus said in a news release. “To date, the pandemic has not hit every part of the nation equally. Optimizing ventilators between geographically disparate locations has the potential to stretch existing ventilator capacity to reduce morbidity and save lives.”
Cohealo said it has enabled more than 5,000 shares of 127 different types of equipment and can mobilize delicate assets including microscopes, lasers and surgical robots. The company’s platform allows hospitals to upload inventory, track usage and develop an operating picture of available capacity. When spikes in demand occur, the system is then capable of selecting the best candidates for sharing and the quantities that need moving, according to Cohealo.
Its platform also supports end-to-end logistics, such as waybill creation, mobilization procedures and chain of custody. Customers can access a digital equipment catalog with profiles of each ventilator type included.
“With almost a decade of experience tracking and sharing medical equipment for some of the largest health systems in the country, our team is poised to solve this challenge,” Cohealo COO Brett Reed said. “Hospitals have an urgent need for ventilators, and we have logistics in place to get these assets to patients quickly.”