IIT-Jodhpur students design 3D face shields for health care staff treating coronavirus COVID-19 patients

In a step to curb the rising risk for health care workers of getting infected with the deadly coronavirus while treating COVID-19 patients, the students of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Jodhpur have designed a face shield for the staff. This comes in the wake of increased demands of personal protective equipments (PPE) among the health workers and so far more the 50 cases have been reported where doctors and medical staff treating coronavirus patients have tested positive for the infection.

A team of researchers working at Automated Manufacturing Laboratory of IIT-Jodhpur have come up with indexable 3-D printed face shields. The design of the face shield consists of indexable transparent protective plastic coving attached to indigenously designed spectacle frame like 3-D printed fixture and elastic thread.

The team led by the Dr Kaushal A Desai, consisting of students--Ankit Agarwal, Shubham Vaishnav, and Pratik Sorathiya developed 50 such prototypes in a span of two days and supplied it to the District Authorities for the usage and feedback. The Institute emphasised that the design is in the prototyping stage and requires a series of testing and certification by appropriate authorities similar to other medical devices.

The increasing number of infected patients is leading to a shortage of PPE for doctors and other hospital staff. Doctors, nursing and medical staff in hospitals, despite the danger of being infected themselves, are treating the corona patients. The number of coronavirus cases in India, that have already crossed 2,000, is causing a major challenge to the health care workers while treating the COVID_19 infected patients.