Reimagining portable oxygen therapy
Research born at the University of Iowa (UI) has led to a $2.55 million National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research program grant to develop a tool to help patients with chronic lung diseases.
The project focus is a portable oxygen concentrator (POC) that uses an electrochemical process to generate 100% pure oxygen with ambient air as its input. Preliminary testing done through previous NIH-funded research suggests the device could overcome many of the shortfalls of available POCs, such as limited oxygen flow, excessive weight, inconsistent oxygen purity, and noise.
The university is partnering with Pranions, Inc., a medical device startup built on research of Suresh Raghavan (pictured, left), professor of biomedical engineering, Syed Mubeen (right), associate professor of chemical and biochemical engineering (CBE), and Austin McKee (17BSE, 22PhD). Ben Dickerhoff (09BS, 13MS) is director of product development for Pranions and principal investigator on the project. Also contributing is Prasoon Kumar, PhD candidate in CBE, and Sattar Alsaedi, who earned a PhD under Mubeen in 2022.
Raghavan and Mubeen are both faculty affiliates of the Iowa Technology Institute. The project has also been supported by UI Ventures, the UI Research Foundation, and the Iowa Economic Development Authority.