Oxygen concentrators research designed to reduce preventable oxygen-related patient deaths
ECRI partnered with Oxygen CoLab to conduct intensive testing of oxygen devices to identify and catalogue those best for resource-deprived healthcare settings
More than 1 million deaths occur every year due to hypoxemia in low- and middle-income countries, many of which could be prevented with appropriate access to medical oxygen.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed major gaps in access to medical oxygen devices, prompting donors, global organizations and supply chain leaders to take action to improve availability long-term. But most of these efforts didn’t address oxygen access for lower-level facilities that serve vulnerable patients in low- and middle-income countries.
ECRI partnered with the Oxygen CoLab – a UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office-funded initiative – to create a comprehensive directory of oxygen concentrators to aid in the procurement of these devices for low-resource settings.
“We replicated real-world scenarios and tested eleven devices to see how they perform in the harsh conditions where they could potentially be deployed,” said Brad Bonnette, ECRI’s Senior Project Officer, “like in a refugee camp, a field hospital, a community health center, or primary health outpost. Picture a mobile clinic in a remote village without a consistent power supply. We want to ensure patients everywhere have access to safe, quality care – whether they live in a metropolitan area near a high-tech hospital, or in a remote community.”
Oxygen concentrators have a particularly important role in low resource settings, namely for smaller and more remote health facilities, for both acute and non-critical-care patients. The devices are proven to save lives, yet there are challenges to implementing wide-scale solutions in low-resource settings. Most concentrator models don’t adapt well to settings with unreliable power sources, and dusty, humid conditions – plus a shortage of staff with specialized training in device maintenance.
With many makes and models available, there has long been a gap in evidence regarding product performance, safety, usability, repairability, electrical resilience and energy efficiency to inform decision-making.
“One of the biggest surprises was the variation in how the units handled the challenging conditions,” said Bonnette. “Some suffered catastrophic failure due to accumulated dust, while others were able to deliver a high concentration of oxygen in the same dusty conditions. Some had a hard time with heat and humidity but did well with dust. We hope buyers can use this information to ensure they acquire equipment that can perform well in their environment.”
Brad Bonnette has been a device safety engineer for ECRI for nearly 20 years. In that time, he has evaluated devices used in infusion therapy, respiratory care, anesthesia, sleep medicine, and consumer health.
ECRI is the only organization in the world to operate independent testing labs where engineers conduct hands-on, rigorous medical device evaluations. To learn more about ECRI, visit ECRI.org.