Winning team files provisional patent for medical device

In 2021, a group of campus stakeholders launched a competition for the most patentable capstone idea (recently renamed to FastTracking Founders Program). Now put on by the Berkeley Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and College of Engineering the annual competition is an excellent opportunity for students to capitalize on their ideas. The winners of the competition receive financial and organizational support to file a provisional patent. “From the campus perspective, this is exactly the stage of early enterprise creation that we want to support,” said Rich Lyons, UC Berkeley Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer. And for a master’s graduate to have a provisional patent on their resume is a big win in any event. It’s great that CoE master’s programs can provide this.” Here, we take a look at the capstone project of the 2022 FastTracking Founders Competition winners. The team designed a splitter that allows up to four patients to safely share a single ventilator.

Team members: Abhi Ghavalkar (MDes ‘22), Mercedes Saldana Sauceda (MDes ‘22), Zach Mudge (CTO), Akash Ghavalkar (CCO), Aiden Ward (Lead Engineer), Priyanshi Porwal (MEng ‘22), Naga Chennuri (MEng ‘22) Prana is a medical device designed for low-resource hospitals to help them accommodate larger patient loads when their facilities are overwhelmed. The device allows up to four patients to share a single hospital ventilator safely, while allowing respiratory therapists to monitor and control individual patient airflows using a centralized dashboard. The device was designed for patients suffering from exacerbations of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). After winning the competition, the team managed to file the provisional patent successfully in September 2022. Applications for the 2023 College of Engineering FastTracking Founders Competition are now open. Apply by Fri. 6/30 for a chance to receive personalized, hands-on support with the patent filing process. Learn more: https://funginstitute.berkeley.edu/fasttracking-founders/.

---

Four-person ventilator wins 2022 FastTracking Founders Competition was originally published in Berkeley Master of Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.