4 ms·

> The seven-year-old, 135-employee Ventec is a fairly small player in a market dominated by Medtronic (under the Puritan Bennett brand), GE Healthcare and Allie

• themantra514 7y ago
  Hello! Please take a moment check out opensourceventilator.org and get in touch if you can contribute to this initiative.
  • davidw 7y ago
    We know how to make ventilators. What we need to do is make them at scale.
    • themantra514 7y ago
      True. And finding a way to do that is part of our initiative. If you would like to contribute to it please get in touch :)
• whatshisface 7y ago
  >The government needs to call on the big players here Call on them to do what, stand behind the President in a press conference and give short speeches? They manufacture ventilators for hospitals, and it's the hospitals who pay for them.
  • dmix 7y ago
    War time measures like taking over private factories to produce armaments is a significant ask, especially when factoring in timelines of a few months turn around (at best). It’s a fair question. I personally don’t see how filling up small companies orderbooks with a giant federal order makes sense when other countries like Italy and Germany have a real and active shortage today, while the US still has capacity. Ramping up production as we face a second wave is going to be happening regardless. There’s more than enough demand globally and from the various hospitals already. Adding more orders on top of it doesn’t exactly make things run more smoothly, there should be plenty of capital readily available for them to expand. Supporting the hospitals/industry in their purchasing and production efforts and clearing red tape is something that could help now. Which I believe is what the giant stimulus and relief packages include already? I guess people won’t be happy unless they buy it all up themselves first then donate it to the most needy, or hoard it more efficiently than others?
    • whatshisface 7y ago
      >I personally don’t see how filling up small companies orderbooks with a giant federal order makes sense when other countries like Italy and Germany have a real and active shortage today But, the federal government doesn't order ventilators. That's not how the US system works, we don't have an NHS like the UK.
      • dmix 7y ago
        There’s a giant emergency stockpile in the US which includes ventilators and other material managed by the federal government. They already talked about distributing them if they become needed, during different press conferences. But otherwise I’m agreeing with you that there are better ways than flooding orderbooks for federal stockpiles. Like subsidies, capitalization, and removing red tape for both hospitals and manufacturers.
      • jhayward 7y ago
        Not only does the federal government order ventilators, it is specifically mandated to stockpile them for a public health emergency. The President also has emergency powers under the Stafford Act to (1) put government orders at the "head of the line" for any manufacturer, and (2) to pre-fund production of materials or products necessary to protect the public or national interest in an emergency.
• smacktoward 7y ago
  The wrinkle being that, in Roosevelt's era, the car factories were right here in the United States. It's much harder for the U.S. government to commandeer a factory in China. It'd be interesting to see how much of the actual production of Medtronic, GE Healthcare, Allied Healthcare, etc. takes place within the United States.
• dehrmann 7y ago
  > Roosevelt commandeered the car factories... Roosevelt also commandeered Americans with Japanese ancestry to live in concentration camps. These sorts of powers are dangerous, an I doubt and edict that extreme would be very effective, it's just this feeling of we have to do something. What the government needed to do two months ago was place very large orders with all the manufacturers and pay enough so they're being made 24/7. The ramp-up time for much more is probably too long, and the peak need will be April-June, hopefully less after that. I doubt you could retool and train a random factory fast enough for that.
  • smachiz 7y ago
    I would bet a lot that the production lines weren't running 24x7 or anywhere near it for ventilators. They're probably batch builds. i.e. 1-4 weeks of production every X weeks. Scaling production != building new lines/factories, just reprioritizing, for significant uptick in units shipped. But you have to hope that those production lines aren't also providing mission critical goods.
  • roywiggins 7y ago
    The cost to doing this seems like a rounding error, even if it's not useful, isn't it? And if we can't use them, we can send them elsewhere to places that end up peaking later.
  • david38 7y ago
    Taking over a factory and putting people in concentration camps aren’t even close to the same thing.
• bluedino 7y ago
  >> In WW2 Roosevelt commandeered the car factories to build planes and tanks. They also built things like machine guns. The problem now, is the car factories have so much automation. The lines are specifically built to build one thing, the robots are designed to do one thing. You can't run a tank down a Ford Focus paint line.
  • cooljacob204 7y ago
    Well they are also built to be modular and support changes in cars over the years. So I don't think it would be that bad.
    • generatorguy 7y ago
      Won’t be strong enough to move a tank though if designed for a focus...
  • tropo 7y ago
    The parts needed are mostly in the engine: mass air flow sensor, oxygen sensor, electric turbo assist