Seattle Children’s Gets $2.3M from Gates

Luke Timmerman8/16/11

Seattle Children’s Hospital said today it has received a two-year, $2.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to continue development of its low-cost ventilator for premature infants that need help in order to breathe. More than 1 million infants die every year because of inadequate lung function, and the Children’s device aims to reduce that figure by offering a ventilator that is simpler to run and cheaper than the ventilators used in developed countries. I last wrote an in-depth feature on this technology, developed by Seattle Children’s CEO Tom Hansen and colleagues, last August.

Luke Timmerman is the National Biotech Editor of Xconomy. E-mail him at ltimmerman@xconomy.com Follow @