Mihir Sheth

Inspiritus Health

Inspiritus Health was founded by 2 Oxford Global Insight Fellows, an electrical engineer and consultant anaesthetist, to use Need Led Innovation to develop user-centric products that can reduce the amount of time patients spend on the ventilator. The founders spent more than 6 weeks immersed in hospitals in Senegal and UK, and talking with over 50 clinicians across the world, to identify root causes associated with prolonged mechanical ventilation. Ventilated patients lose over 30% of their respiratory muscle strength in just 6 days of ventilation, and end up spending 40% of their total time on ventilator in the process of weaning. One of the major reasons for the long weaning time is that patients need to retrain their respiratory muscles, that have been weakened by inactivity during ventilation, in order to allow the patient to breathe independently again. Inspiritus Health is developing an array of products to keep the patient's muscles active and engaged from Day 1 of ventilation, preventing the muscle atrophy from occurring. These novel products would also provide doctors, nurses and physiotherapists with novel data allowing them to further personalise weaning protocols for the patient. This could lead to reduced time on ventilator, leading to reduced complications and may improve the quality of life on discharge.