The COVID-19 pandemic forced medical professionals to innovate and reevaluate how they deal with respiratory treatment while containing an airborne virus. Now, a pair of products developed by a Missouri-based medical company and designed by Sarasota-based ROBRADY could provide the benefits of a negative-pressure hospital room with a hand-held product that fits onto a nebulizer.

Safer Medical Products developed Respiratory Shield and the Endoshield pathogen containment systems were developed in response to the pandemic. With concerns over an airborne virus, medical professionals across the country found themselves challenged simply treating asthma patients and others with common respiratory ailments. Hospitals struggled to find negative pressure spaces to ensure air breathed out by patients could be contained. Dr. Todd Baker, of Safer Medical Products, told the Emergency Physicians Monthly podcast that care for basic asthma attacks was compromised in emergency rooms.

“Patients were getting better care in the back of an ambulance or at home,” he said.

So the company of physicians developed the Respiratory Shield and the Endoshield. That can be used in connection with existing respiratory machines to achieve the same goal as a negative-pressure room by capturing air exhaled by patients to reduce any viral load breathed into the air. For example, when affixed over a nebulizer mask, patients will breath in from the nebulizer like normal, but when they exhale, the air breathed out will be captured by the Respiratory Shield rather than going into the open air.

The concept was fine-tuned at ROBRADY, a Sarasota firm that has designed countless products in the medical space and elsewhere, from military products to transportation. The team there developed a series of 3-D printed prototypes that were evaluated and refined. “Total empathy is more than satisfying design parameters. It’s also responding to a client’s devotion to their product as well as the patient’s need for it,” said ROBRADY founder Rob Brady about the process.

The final product utilizes transparent barriers in combination with a negative pressure system that blocks airborne pathogens like the coronavirus and captures them in high-efficiency and ultra-low particulate air filter systems. The Respiratory Shield can be used with nebulizers, BI/PAP and CPAP machines and during swab collections. The Endoshield can be used for video laryngoscopy, fiber optic placement and intubation.

The medical equipment should now be of use for medical professionals not just for the duration of the pandemic but into the future, as concerns about airborne infections and contamination continue in the future.