August 27, 2020

TOKYO, JAPAN – The Nihon Kohden Group has begun worldwide shipments of the Protective Control^®  feature for their NKV-550 ventilators. Protective Control is a second user interface placed outside of the isolated patient’s room, in addition to the primary user interface on the ventilator next to the patient inside the room. Clinicians can operate the ventilator through this fully functional second user interface as long as the patient is within the sight of the clinician. This is to help reduce the exposure of clinicians when they care for patients with COVID-19 or other contagious diseases.

The NKV-550 ventilator with Protective Control is the only critical care ventilator, at the time of this press release, that has received US FDA’s 510(k) clearance for this feature, a review process more rigorous than the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization. A team of engineers, scientists, and clinicians of Nihon Kohden OrangeMed, Inc, the California-based respiratory business unit of Nihon Kohden Group, started development of this technology since 2015 in the wake of SARS, Swine flu and Ebola outbreaks.

“With diseases like COVID-19, caregivers are always looking for ways to minimize exposure to the virus while maintaining the ability to intervene more quickly when the conditions of the isolated patient change,” said Robert Kacmarek, PhD, director of Respiratory Care at the Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard University and consultant for Nihon Kohden, “This pandemic is a reminder of how important it is to protect our healthcare workers.”

In the US alone, more than 142,000 health workers have been infected by COVID-19 and 660 have died from it [1]. “We are confident this feature will be used by more and more hospitals around the world to provide enhanced protection to clinicians caring for patients with COVID-19 or other contagious diseases”, said Hirokazu Ogino, President and CEO of Nihon Kohden Corporation.

[1] CDC COVID-19: cases in the US. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html. Accessed on August 24, 2020.

Disclaimer: The NKV-550 ventilator has not been registered in, approved for sale in, or available for purchase in all countries or regions.

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