Electropneumatic design and simulation for optimal energy and medication use in air jet medical nebulizers

Abstract

Respiratory disorders cost billions of dollars for healthcare systems worldwide. Air medical jet nebulizers are class II medical devices used to treat respiratory disorders by delivering mist medication to the lungs. Being respiratory drug delivery devices, in-market existing medical nebulizers are far from operating optimally. The main limitation of the existing medical nebulizers is the excessive generation of medicine in a useless way; leading to a loss of the majority of the medicine generated, i.e., 80 to 90 % is thrown out to the environment without making use of it, while exposing the surrounding environment by the unwanted medicine. This paper proposes a new electropneumatic design for air jet medical nebulizers that involves a closed feedback loop to automatically adjust the air compression, medication delivery, and to patient flow control, simultaneously. For instance, a theoretical model is proposed and a set of simulation trials are performed in order to evaluate the model performance in power consumption and efficiency based on common respiratory diseases; The obtained results illustrate the reduction of medication use by more than 80% and reduction in the power consumption between 18% - 44% when compared to the conventional nebulizer, depending on the breathing pattern adopted. We found that a more sophisticated design of the nebulizers could overcome the ergonomic, environmental, and economical concerns facing current nebulization in clinical respiratory care.