What Does New Breathing Technology Offer?
Part 3 of Is Our Oxygen Supply System Broken?
Hillrom offers a ventilation system which is identical to the TAV that we discussed in the last post from Inogen. I do not mean to downplay the significance of a person who previously had little to no mobility be given some mobility, but I know that we can do better than this.
One of the reasons we do not have available self-regulating POCs may be because we have not been able to determine what the hyperoxic range is in tandem with the blood oxygen saturation rate. Say What?????? We need to be monitoring the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood as well as the amount of oxygen. Too much carbon dioxide in the blood can be as damaging as not enough oxygen. We cannot merely increase the amount of oxygen without monitoring the amount of carbon dioxide if we are to create a safe and effective self-regulating POC.
Enter our superhero Oxygen Reserve Index (ORI). If you wish to learn more about this technology, you can access the article through the following link https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10877-017-0049-4
Masimo – rainbow Sensors Here you can observe the ORI device as marketed by the developers.
The cost of the monitor and cables with carrying case is $5675.00. Now let us add the price of the POC which averages around $3,000.00 and extra batteries at $475.00 and we see that the price is prohibitive for personal use for most people. I am sure that insurance companies would also bulk at this cost.
Most of the research using this technology seems to be on patients who have been intubated. We have discussed the success rate for intubation in a past post.
I believe that we have uncovered the reason that my POC cannot regulate itself and that is that at this point the technology is too expensive to be marketed successfully.
Is there anything that we can do to change this problem into a solution? I would love to hear your feedback.