The University of Michigan has partnered with the engineering firm FlexSys to design two devices to help protect health care workers from the coronavirus.
The first is an oxygen helmet patients would use during testing to prevent health care workers from being exposed to substances, such as infected droplets. The second is a portable clear plastic tent that covers patients from their head to about their waistline. Sridhar Kota is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan who worked on the designs and explains how the tent is used.
Sridhar Kota: That has multiple access pores for the doctors to put their hands inside with instruments and do the procedures they need to perform on the patient.
Fifty tents were provided to Michigan Medicine this week. The helmet has not yet been distributed to hospitals.
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— Jorge Avellan is a reporter for 89.1 WEMU News. Contact him at 734.487.3363 or email him javellan@emich.edu