Panther 5 – The Hungarian-made, Professional, Versatile Ventilator

Abstract

Due to the new coronavirus pandemic, every nation had to reorganise its healthcare capabilities, had to extend the healthcare equipment reserves stocked for catastrophes. Compared to the previous years’ intensive care capacities, Hungary had to extend the number of intensive beds, the number of available ventilators and other healthcare equipment to be able to cope with the large inflow of severely ill patients. During only 6 months, Hungary was able to build up a capability of producing a professional, versatile ventilator, which is able to fulfil not only the needs of Covid patients, but will be able to provide support for all those patients in the future, who need assistance in ventilation. The Panther5 is able to ventilate the patient both in invasive and non-invasive mode; in addition to that, it is able to provide high flow nasal oxygen therapy. With the help of ministries and Hungarian medical experts, the Vác based Celitron Kft was able to produce 1,000 units which is a very significant number compared to the number of available ventilators before the pandemic. The author was a medical advisor during the development process, posted by the Ministry of Defence.