What Makes Michigan Instruments Training Test Lung and PneuView Systems The Perfect Training Tools

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respiratory training

With 70% of learning  attributed to experience, experiments, and reflection, a hands-on approach for any student is vital. But for healthcare and respiratory students who will eventually treat real people, hands-on learning is critical. 

Educators, technicians, and researchers need to equip their departments with the right tools to effectively train and test respiratory care techniques. Lung Simulators offer some of the most advanced training and testing capabilities available today.  This effectively helps respiratory students and professionals bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world application.

Advanced Training Test Lungs for Comprehensive Learning

But not all Lung Simulators are created equal! Unlike more basic test lungs, Michigan Instruments’ Training Test Lungs offer residual lung volumes and a dynamic response to therapy that more closely mirrors actual patient conditions. 

Michigan Instruments Training Test Lungs are designed to realistically simulate a wide range of healthy and diseased lung conditions by offering adjustable settings for lung compliance and airway resistance. These features provide an accurate representation of the human pulmonary system, and allow the students invaluable practice with mechanical ventilators, BVMs, and other respiratory equipment before they even enter the clinical setting. 

Effective Respiratory Training and Real-World Applications

Many of the Respiratory Therapy training programs across the U.S. and  around the world use Michigan Instruments’ TTL and PneuView® systems because they are recognized for their versatility, ease of use, and durability, making them essential tools in education and research alike.

Michigan Instruments Training Test Lungs are a better choice because they:

  • Help students understand complex respiratory issues by simulating a wide range of lung conditions.
  • Allow students to work with a realistic total lung and residual volumes.
  • Incorporate many options and great versatility regarding tapping into the “lungs” to introduce gasses, perform additional monitoring or connect to auxiliary devices
  • Simulate asymmetrical lung disease and the resulting ventilation dynamics with The Dual Adult TTL and Dual Adult PneuView systems.
  • Simulate a spontaneous breathing patient and evaluate the response of devices in various support modes.
  • Facilitate education and studies with various oxygen delivery systems, non-invasive ventilation devices/techniques, and other applications requiring a “face” with available Head Simulation Modules 
  • Are designed to be versatile and durable to easily withstand repeated student use in demanding classroom settings.

Train with PneuView® Software

With the PneuView® system, educators and students can take their training even further! This PC-based software interacts with our lung simulators to display real-time data, including waveforms for pressure, volume, and flow. Even when using simple ventilation devices like BVMs, CPAP systems, or emergency ventilators, PneuView allows for dynamic feedback, helping students analyze performance and patient responses.

PneuView can also be used to view, capture, record, and replay ventilation data, making it easy to save and export data for later review. This feature is perfect for storing recordings of ventilation runs, allowing instructors to demonstrate and evaluate techniques during post-session reviews. It’s also invaluable for students and professionals conducting research projects, as the software simplifies data collection and analysis.

How Do These Devices Benefit Your Students?

The TTL® and PneuView® Lung Simulators provide an unmatched combination of hands-on experience, real-time feedback, and adjustability. Students can gain invaluable experience by practicing with simulated pulmonary mechanics that mimic the real-world response to various devices and therapies. By using these tools, training programs can elevate the quality of education they provide, ensuring that students are better prepared to handle real-life respiratory care challenges.

Real-World Testimonials from Educators

Michigan Instruments’ Training Test Lungs and PneuView®3 systems have become invaluable tools for educators and professionals in the respiratory care field. Here’s what some of our users have to say.

Tim Op’t Holt highlights the versatility of the TTL for both education and research, showcasing how the simulators provide realistic feedback for students and drive important studies in respiratory care.

“We use the Michigan Instruments Test Lungs / Lung Simulators (TTL) in our program for demonstration of mechanical ventilation, laboratory practice with ventilators, and aerosol and ventilator research. The TTL is valuable in showing students the effects of changes in compliance and resistance on volume and pressure… In research, we use the breath simulation module to drive the left lung which lifts the right lung to act as a breathing lung for aerosol deposition studies.”  

Tim Op’t Holt EdD, RRT, AE-C, FAARC
Professor and Chair, Cardiorespiratory Care – University of South Alabama

 

Debbie Grube emphasizes the accessibility and affordability of Michigan Instruments’ Test Lungs, underscoring their importance in a classroom setting where advanced simulation technology may not always be readily available.

“Our Respiratory Therapy Program currently owns 4 of the Michigan Instruments TTL® Lung Simulators… The Michigan Instruments lungs are tremendously useful tools that can be easily manipulated by our students, are cost-effective, and are readily available in our own classroom. We consider the TTL’s an essential part of our training program!”  

Debbie Grube RRT, MSM
Director of Respiratory Care – Muskegon Community College

 

Dr. Ann Flint points out the durability and ease of use of Michigan Instruments’ devices, making them essential tools for a wide range of lab exercises and real-world training.

“Michigan Instruments has the best test lung to easily provide simulation of a variety of lung conditions that even students can adjust… They are versatile, and a great tool for giving our students hands-on experience with mechanical ventilation techniques, simulation of disease states, performing experiments to test various concepts, and much more. They are easy to use and durable. We wish we had more!”  

Dr. Ann Flint
(Former) Program Director, Respiratory Care – Jackson College

Breathe New Life into Your Classroom With Michigan Instruments

At Michigan Instruments, our goal is to support respiratory education and research by providing advanced simulation tools that help bridge the gap between theory and practice. Our TTL® and PneuView® Lung Simulators are designed to enhance your training program, offering realistic lung simulations, versatile applications, and easy-to-use software that prepares students and professionals alike for real-world scenarios.

If you’d like to learn more about how these devices can benefit your program, contact us today.

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Leveraging Lung Simulators for Personalized Medicine

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personalized healthcare

Personalization has become a growing trend in many industries, with consumers seeking tailored experiences in everything from their skincare routines to their water bottles. While this trend has taken off in the consumer world, its impact is even more profound in healthcare. 

The Personalized Medicine Revolution

Personalized medicine, which tailors decisions and treatments related to an individual’s unique needs using their genetic profile, is transforming the medical landscape. Personalized medicine changes healthcare from a “one size fits all” approach to an individualized approach, making decisions for each person based on their specific molecular makeup. 

This evolution of healthcare has been made possible by enabling technologies, such as nanotechnology for isolating extracellular vesicles and imaging platforms to predict nanomedicine’s effectiveness. Technologies like these have shifted the landscape of healthcare, offering diagnostic insight on a personalized level like never before.

The Power of Lung Simulators in Personalized Medicine

Respiratory care has also been impacted by the evolution of personalized healthcare, and tools like lung simulators are leading the charge. In the respiratory space, healthcare professionals are able to customize treatments for each patient’s specific condition, size, and age  This remarkable potential extends even beyond human applications. 

Lung simulators replicate the mechanics of human lungs and can be adjusted according to a number of factors and different combinations, such as lung capacity, compliance, and airway resistance.

By mimicking a variety of lung conditions, lung simulators provide healthcare professionals with an inside look into how different treatments interact with various patient conditions. With this information at their fingertips, physicians can develop more precise treatment plans based on real-time data, reducing the risks associated with trial-and-error approaches. 

Customizing Lung Simulators for Diverse Patient Needs

Michigan Instruments’ lung simulators allow clinicians to adjust settings such as tidal volume, respiratory rate, and airway pressures to reflect a range of patient profiles, ensuring that treatments are truly personalized to an individuals’ specific profile for optimal results.

Tailoring for Age and Size

Infants, children, adults, and elderly patients all have distinct respiratory needs. A Michigan Instruments lung simulator can be set to replicate the lung dynamics for a wide range of age related conditions, helping healthcare providers customize ventilator settings for the specific needs of pediatric or geriatric patients.  

Condition-Specific Simulation

Lung diseases like COPD, pulmonary fibrosis, or even acute conditions like pneumonia each present their own unique challenges. Lung simulators allow healthcare professionals to simulate these conditions, which helps them fine-tune treatments before applying them to patients. 

This capability is particularly crucial for managing patients with chronic conditions that require long-term care and frequent adjustment of ventilator settings.

Beyond Human Applications

While lung simulators are primarily designed to enhance human healthcare, their versatility extends beyond human applications. In a unique and extraordinary case, Michigan Instruments was called upon to create a specialized lung simulator for a dolphin. 

By successfully creating a dolphin-specific lung simulator, we demonstrated the flexibility and precision of the lung simulator technology, proving that simulators can be customized to suit even the most unconventional respiratory systems and highlighting the broader applications of lung simulation technology.

Lung Simulators in Research and Training

The use of lung simulators goes beyond direct patient care, playing a significant role in medical research and training. By providing a controlled environment where medical professionals can study how different therapies interact with diverse patient conditions, these simulators help to advance the field of respiratory medicine and personalized medicine. 

Medical teams can simulate challenging scenarios, such as dealing with patients who have complex comorbidities, allowing them to develop and practice personalized treatment strategies. This level of preparation ensures that patient care is both safer and more effective, as clinicians can test and refine their approaches before they ever reach the patient’s bedside.

The Impact on Critical Care and Emergency Medicine

While most personalized healthcare is focused on chronic or long-term conditions and treatments, it can also be applied to emergency and critical care settings. For patients experiencing acute respiratory distress or failure, time is of the essence. Lung simulators combined with personalized medicine can help healthcare providers optimize ventilator settings quickly and accurately, based on patient-specific conditions.

In trauma care or emergency medicine, lung simulators provide a deeper understanding of how different ventilation strategies can affect patient outcomes. This level of precision is key in critical care scenarios where every second counts, and the ability to personalize care can make the difference between life and death.

The Role of CPR Devices: Enhancing Personalized Care

While lung simulators represent the cutting edge of respiratory care, other life-saving technologies complement the effort to deliver personalized medicine. For instance, automated CPR is another opportunity for customization based on individual patient needs.

Automated CPR devices are designed to provide consistent, high-quality chest compressions and ventilations during resuscitation efforts, but they can also be adapted based on the patient’s size, weight, and condition. 

For instance, a smaller adult can require a different compression depth than a larger individual, and these devices can be adjusted accordingly – increasing or decreasing the depth of compression. In addition, the ventilation settings on devices like the Life-Stat can be  set to offer 2 breaths automatically after 30 compressions or 9 asynchronous breaths during continuous compressions.

Though they are primarily used in emergency situations, these CPR devices reflect the same commitment to personalized care that lung simulators provide. Together, they ensure that patients receive treatments tailored to their specific needs, whether in the emergency/hospital rooms or during long-term respiratory therapy.

Advancing Personalized Medicine with Lung Simulators

As healthcare continues to evolve toward a more individualized approach, Michigan Instruments’ lung simulators stand at the forefront of this movement. By enabling clinicians to simulate a wide variety of patient conditions and tailor treatments accordingly, these devices are helping to improve patient outcomes and push the boundaries of what personalized medicine can achieve.

 

We provide a comprehensive suite of tools designed to deliver the most effective, patient-specific care possible. The future of respiratory care is personalized, and lung simulators are helping to lead the way.

Interested to learn more? Contact us today.

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Top 5+ FAQs About Lung Simulators

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michigan lung simulator

For over 45 years, our Michigan Lung Simulator has offered residual lung volumes and a dynamic response to therapy that realistically represents all the functions of the human pulmonary system. Our devices are more advanced now than ever, thanks to our ever-changing technology and dedication to research.

We receive many questions about our lung simulators and their operations. Below are the questions we see most often

1. What Is The Difference Between A “Test Lung” And A “Michigan Lung Simulator”?

We’ve used the terms “test lung,” “training test lung,” and “Michigan lung simulator” to describe our TTL® and PneuView® products. In some ways, these terms are interchangeable. However, in a broader sense, the term “test lung” may include devices that are very simplistic rubber or latex bags. 

On the other hand, “lung simulators” describe a more complex system that accurately mimics the dynamic mechanical characteristics of the human pulmonary system.

2. What Is The Fundamental Purpose Of A Michigan Lung Simulator?

There are several situations and settings where the use of a lung simulator is crucial. A solid lung simulator represents the functions of the human pulmonary system, as well as a range of healthy and diseased lung conditions. 

A lung simulator should allow you to create, monitor and control those forces.  For the following applications and more, a high-quality lung simulator is needed:

  • Designing mechanical ventilators and other respiratory apparatus
  • Developing new modes of ventilation support
  • Training respiratory care and other medical professionals
  • Performing periodic testing and maintenance on ventilation and support devices
  • Troubleshooting equipment problems using a realistic “load”

3. How Do The TTL® And PneuView® Systems Model The Dynamic Compliance And Resistance Characteristic Of The Human Lungs?

Our TTL® and PneuView® systems use a bellows and spring to simulate the compliance characteristics of the lung. The spring can be positioned at several different points along the Top Plate of the simulator to create a lung compliance that ranges from very compliant to normal to very non-compliant (or stiff). 

The resistance characteristics of the lung are set using fixed-orifice parabolic resistors that may be positioned to add resistance to the upper and/or lower airway assembly.  A range of resistors allow for simulation of both healthy and diseased lung conditions.

4. What Is Factory Calibration?

Factory calibration involves tuning all aspects of sensor, electronic, mechanical and software to ensure maximum accuracy of the measurements and simulated parameters provided by TTL® & PneuView® systems. 

Calibration procedures include the setting of the compliance and resistance characteristics of the lungs, as well as setting offset and gain characteristics for each of the pressure transducer channels.

5. How Do I Read The Tidal Volume On The Lung Simulators?

Each simulated lung in the TTL® or PneuView® System has a physical volume scale behind the Top Plate. There is also a plastic pointer and label on the Top Plate that can be used to indicate lung volume. 

To ensure the most accurate indication of lung volume, the pointer on the top plate must correspond to the compliance setting on the lung. When set appropriately, the arrow will point to the gas volume in the lung. 

Note: When using PEEP or CPAP, the starting volume (baseline volume) is greater than zero. The tidal volume would be the total indicated volume minus the baseline volume.

The volume indicator lines on the label are curved, more so as the compliance setting decreases. This is due to the sideways distention of the bellows that occurs during filling of the lung under pressure.

6. Are Michigan Lung Simulators Suitable For Tests With Aerosols Or Just Dry Air Only?

Water vapor will not damage the simulator.  However, we generally don’t recommend introducing aerosolized substances into the lung chambers of our TTL® and PneuView® simulators for the following reasons:

  • Substances other than water can be corrosive to the polyurethane bellows, and/or may accumulate on the ribs of the bellows causing them to stick, become brittle, or not function properly.
  • There is no simple way to “drain” the bellows of any accumulated fluid. If using sterile/demineralized water, you may blow dry gas through the unit until it is fully dried.

Many of our customers have used the TTL® or PneuView® specifically to evaluate aerosol delivery with various devices and/or breathing patterns. In such cases, the aerosolized substance is typically collected using a hydrostatic filter placed in the simulated airway, prior to entering the lung bellows.

Let Us Answer Your Questions

If you have any other questions about our lung simulators, visit our FAQ page or contact us directly!

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