NASA loans oxygen generators with space age technology to save young lives in low-income countries

• A lack of reliable oxygen in developing countries means many surgeons are unable to provide safe and quality care to children
• Hospitals need oxygen to help fight respiratory infections, which claimed the lives of 502,000 children under the age of five in 2021
• Developed by NASA, “M-COG” is a new and highly efficient method of generating pure oxygen to help fight respiratory infections in hospitals

Edinburgh, 24 October 2024 ­– Kids Operating Room (KidsOR), the Scottish charity dedicated to ensuring every child has access to safe surgery in developing countries, has today announced a partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to research how an emerging technology in oxygen generation can be taken to paediatric surgical facilities in the world's most vulnerable and resource poor locations.

The technology has been developed by NASA over many years for possible use in future missions on the Moon and Mars.

A lack of access to reliable oxygen supply is a critical issue in hospitals and operating rooms in low-income countries. The causes for this range from poor infrastructure and supply chain limitations to financial constraints, leaving vulnerable populations at a greater risk of illness and leading to less successful – and sometimes fatal – outcomes in surgery.

Millions of lives are lost each year to respiratory infections caused by a lack of oxygen in hospitals. Respiratory illnesses are the world's biggest infectious killer: they claimed 2.2 million lives, including 502,000 children under five, in 2021. That is equivalent to 250 people dying every hour.

The new partnership will see KidsOR test an innovative technology – Medical Ceramic Oxygen Generator or “M-COG” – to generate medical-grade oxygen on-site in hospitals based in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)*. 

M-COG is a device that creates oxygen with a purity of over 99.99%. It uses advanced ceramic technology to extract oxygen from air using a sophisticated process called oxygen ion transport. As air flows across the surface of the ceramic ion transport material, some of the oxygen in the air is electrochemically split into oxygen ions, and transported across the ceramic membrane, where the oxygen ions recombine into pure oxygen.  The device has no moving parts, meaning it requires almost no maintenance once it is in use, making it perfect for resource-poor settings.

A prototype of the technology was tested at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  These tests demonstrated that M-COG technology is capable of producing high purity, pressurised oxygen.  Because of the modular nature of the technology, M-COG can be used for small-scale systems supplying medical oxygen to clinics, or large-scale systems supplying medical oxygen to large tier 1 hospitals.   

KidsOR and NASA will also work alongside Public Invention (a US 501c3 public charity) and Global Hospital – to deliver this project. This involves testing M-COG's ability to provide hospitals and surgical facilities in LMICs with reliable sources of pressurised medical oxygen that could one day accommodate an operating room's oxygen requirements.

Combining NASA's advanced technology with KidsOR's expertise in establishing state-of-the-art surgical facilities in vulnerable locations, it is hoped that children no longer die unnecessary deaths because of a lack of oxygen.

KidsOR will initially test the new technology for use in medical environments at its Centre for Global Operations in Dundee, Scotland, and simultaneously at surgical facilities in Zambia. Developing advanced monitoring and power solutions, KidsOR expects to publish outcomes from its work with NASA throughout the partnership. In time, the technology could be deployed across the charity's 100 surgical centres spread across 40 countries and beyond.

Garreth Wood, Co-Founder and Chairman of KidsOR, commented: “Our partnership with NASA has significant and life-changing potential for patients across low-resource settings. Access to surgery in low- and middle-income countries is incredibly challenging, particularly in those areas experiencing war, climate related challenges, or civil unrest. I am extremely proud that our expertise in developing complex surgical facilities in low resource setting, and training the local teams to independently sustain their own service, has made us the perfect partner to work with NASA on this exciting research project.

“Our expert team of engineers here in Scotland and across sub-Saharan Africa are understandably thrilled to be working with NASA to potentially transform care for children. Taking space shuttle technology to the most remote, most vulnerable child and helping save their life – that's a dream come true for all of us at Kids Operating Room.”

John Graf, Engineer at NASA, added: “It is amazing to think that technology being developed to help get humans to Mars can help to save lives along the way. While we at NASA often use established technology, the unique demands of space exploration sometimes require us to develop new solutions, which must be thoroughly tested on Earth first. The chance to explore how we deploy M-COG in hospitals for Kids Operating Room in low-income countries is a perfect example of this synergy.”

ENDS

For press enquiries, please contact [email protected]

Interviews with Garreth Wood, Co-Founder and Chairman of KidsOR, Courtney Ludick, Biomedical Engineer at KidsOR, and John Graf, Engineer at NASA, available on request. 

Notes to Editors

*Because M-COG is new technology, and it has not been certified for medical use, these initial tests are engineering evaluations – the oxygen will not be administered to patients.   

About Kids Operating Room 

Kids Operating Room is a global health charity, focused on transforming surgical care for children across the globe. Currently, 1.75 billion children live in countries where there is not routine access to safe and timely surgical care. Kids Operating Room install and equip high-quality, child-friendly operating rooms in low- and middle-income countries, train the next generation of paediatric surgeons and advocate for children's surgery at government level. 

The charity will shortly open their 100^th operating room, spread across 40 countries. With each operating room creating capacity for 8 operations a day, 5-days a week, the charity has created capacity for more than 200,000 operations a year.

Their extensive training programmes for surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and biomedical engineers, along with their award-winning Solar Surgery system help hospitals to maximise their use of the capacity created across these hospitals.

Studies show this work saves lives, prevents disability, allows children to go to school and have significant economic benefits for the national economies as care-giving parents can return to work and children grow up free from disability, better educated and able to contribute to their nation's economies.

At Kids Operating Room, we believe every child deserves access to safe surgery. Find out more at www.KidsOR.org

Attachments

• Kids Operating Room - Dundee R&D facility
• Kids Operating Room tests Medical Ceramic Oxygen Generator from NASA