A Harvard graduate once said, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” And while many Harvard students are certainly doing things for our country in the midst of this pandemic, we figured we’d focus our post today on what Yale students are doing for their country because, well, it wowed us. As just about every citizen in our nation knows, we’ve got a shortage of ventilators. And while companies like GM and Ford have patriotically answered the call by switching from making cars and trucks to making ventilators, leave it to ingenious Yale students to aim to, well, effectively double the supply.

As Rose Horowitch reports for The Yale Daily News in a piece entitled “Yale students create device to address ventilator shortage,” “Timothy Foldy-Porto ’20 drew up the design for a ventilator-splitting device in 30 minutes. Now, almost a month after this first sketch, Foldy-Porto, Brian Beitler MED ’22 and Peter Kahn, a resident at Yale New Haven Hospital, are planning to distribute thousands of Vent Multiplexors — the first device capable of splitting a ventilator feed while allowing for individualized care for both patients on the ventilator — to hospitals around the world. Since drawing up these first designs, they have started a company, been granted Emergency Use Authorization by the Food and Drug Administration and successfully co-ventilated two critically ill patients at YNHH.”

This is really remarkable. We at Ivy Coach salute Yale undergraduate Timothy Foldy-Porto and the folks at Yale who have come together in common cause to address the shortage of ventilators in our nation with a ventilator splitting contraption that effectively makes one ventilator good for two. Way to go Timothy Foldy-Porto and Yale University!