- Inogen's innovative new oxygen
concentrator not only won a Medical Design Excellence award, it will
have a positive impact on the lives of people who use supplemental
oxygen.
Off the clock
I remember reading of a performance
artist who challenged himself by punching a time clock once every hour, 24
hours a day for a year. How difficult that must have been not having the
option to vacation in Portland, go to a movie, or even visit a friend for
lunch. There are 30 million people in the U.S. with Chronic Obstructive
Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Without supplemental oxygen, they would be
similarly tethered by their circumstance. For those who do want to take
that trip or eat out, there are two oxygen delivery systems that allow
them some degree of freedom - oxygen conservers and oxygen concentrators.
When we first met the Inogen group, they
were already familiar with our work on the HELiOs™
oxygen system, the conserver we had developed for Nellcor
Puritan-Bennett three years before. Inogen wanted us to duplicate this
success for them in the oxygen concentrator market. An oxygen concentrator
is a device that cleans nitrogen from ambient air and supplies a
continuous flow of pure (about 95%) oxygen to the user by way of an air
tube called a nasal cannula.
Since 2004 the conserver market has
boomed, largely due to the success of the HELiOs system.
The main issue with these types of
devices is that they require refilling from a large liquid oxygen tank
every few hours. Concentrators don’t need refilling, but for other
reasons, business has not fared so well. Inogen's idea was to re-think the
technology and re-define the category.
The concentrator market had been in
decline for many years. For COPD patients on the go, concentrators added a
degree of mobility, but the units were big and noisy, and needed to be
connected to a wall socket. It was also difficult to sell a product that
was industrial looking and heavy to lug about. Inogen planned to develop a
lightweight, efficient, and quiet portable oxygen concentrator that
could run on batteries.
Start-up company needed help
The start-up company presented us with a
very preliminary prototype that worked, but had only limited
functionality. They had already completed a portion of the initial
development and had identified some proprietary components they wanted to
incorporate into the final design. Their plan was to use off-the-shelf
parts, hire us for the I.D., and make a real product out of what they had.
But like most of the devices we develop, almost all of the components
eventually had to be custom designed.
Over the period of about a year, their
group completed the electronics and software development. Concurrently,
Omnica performed the industrial design, mechanical layout, the internal
and external packaging, battery case, chargers, carts, the satellite
conserver valve, the manifold design, and the extrusion and chassis
assembly. Omnica worked with other vendors to successfully
miniaturize the pneumatics and valving for use in the lightweight design.
We even built the production test equipment, the manifold leak testers,
and later approved the first articles.
We fabricated 18 pre-production
prototypes of the Inogen One Oxygen Concentrator System™.
Our client used them to introduce the
product in a trade show. Reaction to the new device was overwhelming, and
on that basis, the company made projections of how many units to
manufacture as a first run of the product. Six months later, when the
concentrator actually became available to the market, they had to
dramatically revamp production forecasts to keep up with rapidly rising
demand.
 It
runs on batteries and is approved for use on most airlines.
The Inogen One Oxygen Concentrator System
fulfilled the promise of independence for highly active home oxygen
patients. It weighs 10 pounds, and runs for 2 to 3 hours on rechargeable
batteries (indefinitely on A/C). It is very quiet and features a breath
detection system four times as efficient as other concentrators. The
Inogen One is the only oxygen concentrator which meets 100% of FAA
requirements for use upon aircraft. It has won three awards including
the prestigious MDEA design excellence award.
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