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Open Source Ventilator Project

203 points by cklaus 7y ago

cklaus 7y ago
Welcome to Open Source Ventilator (OSV) Ireland. This project was initiated by the COVID-19 global pandemic as a result of a community discussion within a Facebook group called Open Source COVID-19 Medical Supplies (OSCMS). This group rapidly grew and currently is targeting the development of a number of different COVID-19 related medical supplies. OSV Ireland was formed by Colin Keogh, Conall Laverty & David Pollard, with the goal of building a focused team in Ireland to begin development of a Field Emergency Ventilator (FEV) in partnership with the Irish Health Service. To date we have formed a team of engineers, designers and medical practitioners to develop new, low resource interventions, all working collaboratively online. Bag Valve Masks (BVM), 3D printed and traditionally manufactured components are being considered to maximise potential manufacturing capabilities. We will also include other challenges and problems as they arise from frontline healthcare workers, which we will encourage our volunteers to tackle. We have a core developer team publishing open source designs with ongoing communication with medical professionals regarding needs requirements, testing and validation processes. The developer team is led by OpenLung in Canada in collaboration with an Irish based engineering and operations team. The developer team is led by Trevor Smale, Dr. Andrew Finkle, and David O’Reilly from OpenLung as well as Conall Laverty and Dr. Keith Kennedy from Ireland. Work is well underway with hundreds of worldwide contributors.
- niutech 7y ago
  Have you heard of Polish open source ventilator VentilAid? http://www.ventilaid.org http://www.ventilaid.org
chrisseaton 7y ago
> 15-20% of infected people require hospitalization for respiratory problems This is wrong - it's 15-20% of identified, diagnosed and subsequently monitored infected people, isn't it? I thought there was a mass of unidentified infected people, and even basically diagnosed but told to just deal with it at home with no further contact as they're low risk and minimal symptoms, and (obviously) 0% of these groups are going into hospital? This is what Wikipedia says at the moment. Or am I wrong?
- axfan 7y ago
  I believe you are correct.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Yes, that number is negligently incorrect. It's like saying 90% of basketball players require casts because, from the set who end up in ambulance, 90% of them have a broken arm. That doesn't mean 90% of basketball players require casts, and it certainly doesn't mean they need them all at once. There was a study posted here recently that said as many at 86% of people were asymptomatic, then only some sliver of those with symptoms end up needing to go to hospital in the first place -- and 20% of that group that tests positive for the virus ends up needing a ventilator and 5% of them end up dead. Net-net close to a 0% fatality rate under 29, 0.1% under 49. Still gonna feel like crap tho.
  - tcbawo 7y ago
    Nobody knows the asymptomatic rate for certain, one way or the other. We don't know the rate of false positives with existing tests.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      Fine, but we absolutely do know for an absolute fact that -- it is not true 15-20% of people with nCoV-19 need a ventilator. We don't know what the number is but we 100% with absolute certainty know it is not 15-20%. If we acquiesce to 70% of the US getting nCoV-19 as the epidemiologists are suggesting that would require 50 million ventilators. There are about 70,000 in the US. So we'd need almost 1000X as many ventilators as we have. If that were true we've have the national guard locking people inside their houses, and the UK wouldn't be contemplating giving nCov-19 to everyone young to foster herd immunity.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
TaylorAlexander 7y ago
The page isn’t loading so I’m not sure what they’ve got, but I’m still trying to get answers to a question I have. I did research Tuesday and it seems like ventilators are positive pressure only, and they cycle between a low pressure and a high pressure. If this is the case, could an air compressor with a regulator be used as the pressure source? If so, a small device with just two pressure regulators and an electronic valve could be used to cycle between high and low pressures for each patient. I keep seeing open source ventilators that use a fan and a motor, but those seem likely to fail. Air compressors are abundant and could literally be taken from construction sites to be used. You put a pressure regulator to go down to the (very low) pressures one might want as a maximum for any patient, then you can gang that up to a whole bunch of hoses. Finally a little box with a couple of regulators can adjust the per patient high and low levels. This to me seems much simpler and more reliable than ventilators with their own fan. But I don’t have a good way of reaching anyone. I’ve created a thread on my website with my sources, thinking, and some questions. If anyone knows about this please reply here or there and let me know. Thanks. https://reboot.love/t/coronavirus-towards-a-cheap-and-easy-to-manufacture-ventilator/281/11 https://reboot.love/t/coronavirus-towards-a-cheap-and-easy-t...
- IAmEveryone 7y ago
  I believe hospitals do use systems with a single, central supply of pressurised air. However, I'm also getting the sense from reading about these efforts that creating pressurised air is the easiest part of the setup. You need to control that pressure with a precision unlike any other application of air pressure. Just alternating high and low pressure isn't going to work, for example: you need to slowly ramp up pressure, then slowly release, on a specific schedule. Every patient also has individual needs, to the point where even for two people of the same gender and similar age/weight, the settings ideal for one might kill the other, and vice versa. If I understand it correctly, these machines use feedback loops with sensors for blood oxidisation, acidosis, the elasticity of the lung, and other factors. Without such mechanisms, you'd be constantly adjusting the settings––consider a heating system or AC where you can't set the desired temperature, but only flow rate and power of the heating/cooling instrument. You need constant attention to keep such a setup within a comfortable range. And that attention will also be in short supply when hospitals are overrun.
aceperry 7y ago
There are a few other open-source and crowd-source projects like this that I've seen. It's interesting to see so much volunteer response to the crisis.
davidw 7y ago
Anyone pitching in seems like they're doing a good thing, but isn't the problem one more of political organization and scaling production? In other words, the US president (he is the only one authorized to do it) needs to activate the Defense Production Act, and get existing companies to mass produce existing designs. Something similar needs to happen elsewhere. This is a matter of days or weeks, not months. Please gently correct me if I have this wrong.
- labcomputer 7y ago
  My understanding is that the various open source ventilator projects are attempting to use readily-available COTS parts (by, for example, using a constant-speed blower and valves operated by RC hobby servos instead of a variable-speed blower). So that should, at least partially, solve the scaling problem. As for political organization, I would think that almost takes care of itself if someone presents a turn-key, scalable solution.
  - hackcasual 7y ago
    So if these open source ventilators are needed in any number, it's going to be dependent on the RC hobby servo motor supply chain?
- rawfan 7y ago
  It‘s already happening elsewhere voluntarily. Sharp is producing masks and Draeger is AFAIK working on massproducing ventilators.
arcticbull 7y ago
Please, stop with these. As experts have shared many times on here, once you need a ventilator, the ventilator is the least of your problems. Trying to apply a ventilator to a COVID-19 patient who needs one when you have no idea what you're doing can create the same lung injuries as COVID-19 itself.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Please, continue with these. As experts have shared many times on here, ventilator shortages will soon become commonplace, and medical professionals have been discussing ways to use a bag, facemask and manual labor to work as a ventilator. Trying to apply a ventilator to a COVID-19 patient when you're a medical professional isn't possible when you don't have any free ventilators. Every bit helps.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Not every bit helps. Sometimes trying to do something, badly, will cause more harm than not trying. I sympathize, it's frustrating, and it's difficult to sit on your hands sometimes feeling like you should be doing something. In totality, however, furthering things like DIY ventilators (like DIY open-heart surgery) can cause more harm than good. We've got governments, experts and professionals mobilizing to prepare for this, let's allow them to do their jobs. This is what they've trained for.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      >let's allow them to do their jobs Do hobbyists rigging together servo motors to prepare for a worst-case scenario really interfere with the soon-to-be overwhelmed professional medical industry workers attempts to do their jobs? The only reason I can think of to be against this would be kind of like doing a trust fall, voicing against independent work to signal personal trust in the capacity of the medical system. Of course, that would be a purely social reason, not really helpful for saving lives or improving the system.
      - 7y ago
vr46 7y ago
What is the point of all these? Large scale manufacturers have already been sent blueprints of ventilators and have the engineering ability and production lines to make them. Then you need trained nurses and staff to operate them.
- jka 7y ago
  Open source designs could help scale up production in times of need by allowing manufacturers to self-assess whether they're capable of providing additional capacity. Yes, we assume blueprints have now been shared and that production is scaling up - but it has required a lot of time, effort, communication and bargaining. That said, open source alone is not a panacea. Questions should be asked of open source designs: - Do the designs meet regulatory standards for the market(s) they are intended for? - Is the quality assurance process equally open, so that manufacturers & recipients can verify whether products are authentic and fit-for-purpose? It looks like the OSV project are aware of these questions and provide their working assumptions and information about work-in-progress on their homepage.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
I made some remarks about ventilator alternatives here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22624959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22624959 To pull out some pertinent details: Ventilators for covid19 seem to be mostly for inflammation and fluid in the lungs (aka pneumonia), not lung or chest paralysis. If you need a ventilator due to inflammation or fluid build up, you can do other things to address those issues. If you are doing home care for serious lung issues, a downside of mechanical intervention is that you probably don't know how to adequately sterilize your equipment. This means nasty stuff grows on the equipment and then this nasty stuff gets delivered directly into the lungs. So I'm not thrilled to pieces to see the emphasis on "ooh, shiny!" homemade technical solutions in place of non-invasive home care. You can do lung clearance without mechanical intervention. This can make a ventilator unnecessary. You can do lung clearance easily on your own in the shower by standing with your feet shoulder-width apart or a bit wider, bending over as far as you can and coughing hard. If you bring up a lot of fluid from the lungs, it looks and feels a whole lot like vomiting. My sons and I call it "puking up a lung." Inflammation can be combated with commonly available non drug remedies, like caffeine, lettuce, avoiding pro inflammatory foods (avoid peanut oil like the devil himself made it for you, limit or avoid bacon as it is hard on the lungs). Etc. Please see my previous remarks about best sleeping positions, etc. I am very concerned that homemade ventilators are going to become a source of secondary infection and this secondary infection will be worse than covid19 because it will be bacterial or fungal and it will be antibiotic resistant. If I had any idea how on Earth to start a counter movement, I would be all over it. I have no idea how to do that, so I occasionally leave a comment on HN giving some of my thoughts, which isn't likely to exactly catch fire. This is today's comment in that vein.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  >We have a core developer team publishing open source designs with ongoing communication with medical professionals regarding needs requirements, testing and validation processes. The developer team is led by OpenLung in Canada in collaboration with an Irish based engineering and operations team. The developer team is led by Trevor Smale, Dr. Andrew Finkle, and David O’Reilly from OpenLung as well as Conall Laverty and Dr. Keith Kennedy from Ireland. It sounds like a lot of these vents will end up in the hands of medical professionals. We're looking at a future with warehouses or stadiums full of sick individuals, and also a future where everyone will be pulled from every specialty to work on COVID-19, so there is some evidence that trained professionals and patients will outnumber commercial ventilators. Depending on how many people get sick at once, we could easily end up in a situation where the patients waiting outside are so numerous that they could consume as much equipment as anyone could put together, no matter how much the real manufacturers ramp up production.
dang 7y ago
Loosely related threads from recent days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22453100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22453100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573926
classics2 7y ago
Sure, have some home made barotrauma and pneumonia to go with your COVID.
mikeInAlaska 7y ago
Has anyone looked at Cuirass ventilators? The (seemingly only) manufacturer says they are great for clearing lungs and breathing. They even seem to indicate them for use with Covid. They are basically iron lungs revamped. They look easier to amateur build than invasive ventilators and with no intubation, anyone could apply one.
Gatsky 7y ago
I am 90% sure there will be a useful antiviral therapy available soon, whether it is remdesivir, favipiravir or even chloroquine. This will change the game in humanity's favour. Antivirals are also the only solution which can actually scale to the problem, unlike these ventilator projects or even vaccines (at least not for a very long time, bear in mind that under ideal conditions the supply of seasonal flu vaccines is often dicey). The first use for antivirals will be to reduce the number of patients with severe infection requiring ventilatory support. Making these antivirals as useful as possible is of great importance, and that means going all in on mass producing a quick and reliable and broadly applicable diagnostic test. I would much rather see open source projects targeting diagnostic tests or manufacturing nasopharyngeal swabs. Admittedly, this is much harder to achieve for people not involved in life science research or without access to virological specimens.
brutus1213 7y ago
I like the effort and project. I tried looking at it and the techcrunch articles and was disappointed by this and the open source mask efforts. This is going to sound horrible but I think there is something that needs to be said. We shouldn't have to hack/make our way out of this shortage. I say this as a diehard hacker/maker. A factory can put together high quality and high volume versions of these two items. It is a national shame (I'm in Canada but lived in the US for years) that we don't have domestic capacity and ability to surge on these items. We can still surge. This is not bloody rocket science. If we start today, we can have factories in a month. We should be surging on this today. We should have been surging on this since January and not have to deal with a shortage of bloody test swabs. I know raw materials and equipment are in short supply. But if our economies are truly unable to find the necessary parts in our just-in-time inventory or storage, we as a generation should hold our heads in shame and leaders accountable.
charliewallace 7y ago
This is a project based in Ireland. For a similar US-based project, see https://www.projectopenair.org/ https://www.projectopenair.org/
thekalinga 7y ago
Went over many comments. I see many people who are worried about an opensource project because its going to throw the apple cart of existing price gouging players in the market, but they are not open about it This is an excellent foray of opensource into a space thats currently extorting people to live, i.e medical industry

203 points by cklaus 7y ago

Welcome to Open Source Ventilator (OSV) Ireland. This project was initiated by the COVID-19 global pandemic as a result of a community discussion within a Facebook group called Open Source COVID-19 Medical Supplies (OSCMS). This group rapidly grew and currently is targeting the development of a number of different COVID-19 related medical supplies. OSV Ireland was formed by Colin Keogh, Conall Laverty & David Pollard, with the goal of building a focused team in Ireland to begin development of a Field Emergency Ventilator (FEV) in partnership with the Irish Health Service. To date we have formed a team of engineers, designers and medical practitioners to develop new, low resource interventions, all working collaboratively online. Bag Valve Masks (BVM), 3D printed and traditionally manufactured components are being considered to maximise potential manufacturing capabilities. We will also include other challenges and problems as they arise from frontline healthcare workers, which we will encourage our volunteers to tackle. We have a core developer team publishing open source designs with ongoing communication with medical professionals regarding needs requirements, testing and validation processes. The developer team is led by OpenLung in Canada in collaboration with an Irish based engineering and operations team. The developer team is led by Trevor Smale, Dr. Andrew Finkle, and David O’Reilly from OpenLung as well as Conall Laverty and Dr. Keith Kennedy from Ireland. Work is well underway with hundreds of worldwide contributors.

niutech 7y ago
Have you heard of Polish open source ventilator VentilAid? http://www.ventilaid.org http://www.ventilaid.org

chrisseaton 7y ago

> 15-20% of infected people require hospitalization for respiratory problems This is wrong - it's 15-20% of identified, diagnosed and subsequently monitored infected people, isn't it? I thought there was a mass of unidentified infected people, and even basically diagnosed but told to just deal with it at home with no further contact as they're low risk and minimal symptoms, and (obviously) 0% of these groups are going into hospital? This is what Wikipedia says at the moment. Or am I wrong?

axfan 7y ago
I believe you are correct.
arcticbull 7y ago
Yes, that number is negligently incorrect. It's like saying 90% of basketball players require casts because, from the set who end up in ambulance, 90% of them have a broken arm. That doesn't mean 90% of basketball players require casts, and it certainly doesn't mean they need them all at once. There was a study posted here recently that said as many at 86% of people were asymptomatic, then only some sliver of those with symptoms end up needing to go to hospital in the first place -- and 20% of that group that tests positive for the virus ends up needing a ventilator and 5% of them end up dead. Net-net close to a 0% fatality rate under 29, 0.1% under 49. Still gonna feel like crap tho.
- tcbawo 7y ago
  Nobody knows the asymptomatic rate for certain, one way or the other. We don't know the rate of false positives with existing tests.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Fine, but we absolutely do know for an absolute fact that -- it is not true 15-20% of people with nCoV-19 need a ventilator. We don't know what the number is but we 100% with absolute certainty know it is not 15-20%. If we acquiesce to 70% of the US getting nCoV-19 as the epidemiologists are suggesting that would require 50 million ventilators. There are about 70,000 in the US. So we'd need almost 1000X as many ventilators as we have. If that were true we've have the national guard locking people inside their houses, and the UK wouldn't be contemplating giving nCov-19 to everyone young to foster herd immunity.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago

TaylorAlexander 7y ago

The page isn’t loading so I’m not sure what they’ve got, but I’m still trying to get answers to a question I have. I did research Tuesday and it seems like ventilators are positive pressure only, and they cycle between a low pressure and a high pressure. If this is the case, could an air compressor with a regulator be used as the pressure source? If so, a small device with just two pressure regulators and an electronic valve could be used to cycle between high and low pressures for each patient. I keep seeing open source ventilators that use a fan and a motor, but those seem likely to fail. Air compressors are abundant and could literally be taken from construction sites to be used. You put a pressure regulator to go down to the (very low) pressures one might want as a maximum for any patient, then you can gang that up to a whole bunch of hoses. Finally a little box with a couple of regulators can adjust the per patient high and low levels. This to me seems much simpler and more reliable than ventilators with their own fan. But I don’t have a good way of reaching anyone. I’ve created a thread on my website with my sources, thinking, and some questions. If anyone knows about this please reply here or there and let me know. Thanks. https://reboot.love/t/coronavirus-towards-a-cheap-and-easy-to-manufacture-ventilator/281/11 https://reboot.love/t/coronavirus-towards-a-cheap-and-easy-t...

IAmEveryone 7y ago
I believe hospitals do use systems with a single, central supply of pressurised air. However, I'm also getting the sense from reading about these efforts that creating pressurised air is the easiest part of the setup. You need to control that pressure with a precision unlike any other application of air pressure. Just alternating high and low pressure isn't going to work, for example: you need to slowly ramp up pressure, then slowly release, on a specific schedule. Every patient also has individual needs, to the point where even for two people of the same gender and similar age/weight, the settings ideal for one might kill the other, and vice versa. If I understand it correctly, these machines use feedback loops with sensors for blood oxidisation, acidosis, the elasticity of the lung, and other factors. Without such mechanisms, you'd be constantly adjusting the settings––consider a heating system or AC where you can't set the desired temperature, but only flow rate and power of the heating/cooling instrument. You need constant attention to keep such a setup within a comfortable range. And that attention will also be in short supply when hospitals are overrun.

aceperry 7y ago

There are a few other open-source and crowd-source projects like this that I've seen. It's interesting to see so much volunteer response to the crisis.

davidw 7y ago

Anyone pitching in seems like they're doing a good thing, but isn't the problem one more of political organization and scaling production? In other words, the US president (he is the only one authorized to do it) needs to activate the Defense Production Act, and get existing companies to mass produce existing designs. Something similar needs to happen elsewhere. This is a matter of days or weeks, not months. Please gently correct me if I have this wrong.

labcomputer 7y ago
My understanding is that the various open source ventilator projects are attempting to use readily-available COTS parts (by, for example, using a constant-speed blower and valves operated by RC hobby servos instead of a variable-speed blower). So that should, at least partially, solve the scaling problem. As for political organization, I would think that almost takes care of itself if someone presents a turn-key, scalable solution.
- hackcasual 7y ago
  So if these open source ventilators are needed in any number, it's going to be dependent on the RC hobby servo motor supply chain?
rawfan 7y ago
It‘s already happening elsewhere voluntarily. Sharp is producing masks and Draeger is AFAIK working on massproducing ventilators.

arcticbull 7y ago

Please, stop with these. As experts have shared many times on here, once you need a ventilator, the ventilator is the least of your problems. Trying to apply a ventilator to a COVID-19 patient who needs one when you have no idea what you're doing can create the same lung injuries as COVID-19 itself.

whatshisface 7y ago
Please, continue with these. As experts have shared many times on here, ventilator shortages will soon become commonplace, and medical professionals have been discussing ways to use a bag, facemask and manual labor to work as a ventilator. Trying to apply a ventilator to a COVID-19 patient when you're a medical professional isn't possible when you don't have any free ventilators. Every bit helps.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Not every bit helps. Sometimes trying to do something, badly, will cause more harm than not trying. I sympathize, it's frustrating, and it's difficult to sit on your hands sometimes feeling like you should be doing something. In totality, however, furthering things like DIY ventilators (like DIY open-heart surgery) can cause more harm than good. We've got governments, experts and professionals mobilizing to prepare for this, let's allow them to do their jobs. This is what they've trained for.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    >let's allow them to do their jobs Do hobbyists rigging together servo motors to prepare for a worst-case scenario really interfere with the soon-to-be overwhelmed professional medical industry workers attempts to do their jobs? The only reason I can think of to be against this would be kind of like doing a trust fall, voicing against independent work to signal personal trust in the capacity of the medical system. Of course, that would be a purely social reason, not really helpful for saving lives or improving the system.
    - 7y ago

vr46 7y ago

What is the point of all these? Large scale manufacturers have already been sent blueprints of ventilators and have the engineering ability and production lines to make them. Then you need trained nurses and staff to operate them.

jka 7y ago
Open source designs could help scale up production in times of need by allowing manufacturers to self-assess whether they're capable of providing additional capacity. Yes, we assume blueprints have now been shared and that production is scaling up - but it has required a lot of time, effort, communication and bargaining. That said, open source alone is not a panacea. Questions should be asked of open source designs: - Do the designs meet regulatory standards for the market(s) they are intended for? - Is the quality assurance process equally open, so that manufacturers & recipients can verify whether products are authentic and fit-for-purpose? It looks like the OSV project are aware of these questions and provide their working assumptions and information about work-in-progress on their homepage.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I made some remarks about ventilator alternatives here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22624959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22624959 To pull out some pertinent details: Ventilators for covid19 seem to be mostly for inflammation and fluid in the lungs (aka pneumonia), not lung or chest paralysis. If you need a ventilator due to inflammation or fluid build up, you can do other things to address those issues. If you are doing home care for serious lung issues, a downside of mechanical intervention is that you probably don't know how to adequately sterilize your equipment. This means nasty stuff grows on the equipment and then this nasty stuff gets delivered directly into the lungs. So I'm not thrilled to pieces to see the emphasis on "ooh, shiny!" homemade technical solutions in place of non-invasive home care. You can do lung clearance without mechanical intervention. This can make a ventilator unnecessary. You can do lung clearance easily on your own in the shower by standing with your feet shoulder-width apart or a bit wider, bending over as far as you can and coughing hard. If you bring up a lot of fluid from the lungs, it looks and feels a whole lot like vomiting. My sons and I call it "puking up a lung." Inflammation can be combated with commonly available non drug remedies, like caffeine, lettuce, avoiding pro inflammatory foods (avoid peanut oil like the devil himself made it for you, limit or avoid bacon as it is hard on the lungs). Etc. Please see my previous remarks about best sleeping positions, etc. I am very concerned that homemade ventilators are going to become a source of secondary infection and this secondary infection will be worse than covid19 because it will be bacterial or fungal and it will be antibiotic resistant. If I had any idea how on Earth to start a counter movement, I would be all over it. I have no idea how to do that, so I occasionally leave a comment on HN giving some of my thoughts, which isn't likely to exactly catch fire. This is today's comment in that vein.

whatshisface 7y ago
>We have a core developer team publishing open source designs with ongoing communication with medical professionals regarding needs requirements, testing and validation processes. The developer team is led by OpenLung in Canada in collaboration with an Irish based engineering and operations team. The developer team is led by Trevor Smale, Dr. Andrew Finkle, and David O’Reilly from OpenLung as well as Conall Laverty and Dr. Keith Kennedy from Ireland. It sounds like a lot of these vents will end up in the hands of medical professionals. We're looking at a future with warehouses or stadiums full of sick individuals, and also a future where everyone will be pulled from every specialty to work on COVID-19, so there is some evidence that trained professionals and patients will outnumber commercial ventilators. Depending on how many people get sick at once, we could easily end up in a situation where the patients waiting outside are so numerous that they could consume as much equipment as anyone could put together, no matter how much the real manufacturers ramp up production.

dang 7y ago

Loosely related threads from recent days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22453100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22453100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573656 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22573926

classics2 7y ago

Sure, have some home made barotrauma and pneumonia to go with your COVID.

mikeInAlaska 7y ago

Has anyone looked at Cuirass ventilators? The (seemingly only) manufacturer says they are great for clearing lungs and breathing. They even seem to indicate them for use with Covid. They are basically iron lungs revamped. They look easier to amateur build than invasive ventilators and with no intubation, anyone could apply one.

Gatsky 7y ago

I am 90% sure there will be a useful antiviral therapy available soon, whether it is remdesivir, favipiravir or even chloroquine. This will change the game in humanity's favour. Antivirals are also the only solution which can actually scale to the problem, unlike these ventilator projects or even vaccines (at least not for a very long time, bear in mind that under ideal conditions the supply of seasonal flu vaccines is often dicey). The first use for antivirals will be to reduce the number of patients with severe infection requiring ventilatory support. Making these antivirals as useful as possible is of great importance, and that means going all in on mass producing a quick and reliable and broadly applicable diagnostic test. I would much rather see open source projects targeting diagnostic tests or manufacturing nasopharyngeal swabs. Admittedly, this is much harder to achieve for people not involved in life science research or without access to virological specimens.

brutus1213 7y ago

I like the effort and project. I tried looking at it and the techcrunch articles and was disappointed by this and the open source mask efforts. This is going to sound horrible but I think there is something that needs to be said. We shouldn't have to hack/make our way out of this shortage. I say this as a diehard hacker/maker. A factory can put together high quality and high volume versions of these two items. It is a national shame (I'm in Canada but lived in the US for years) that we don't have domestic capacity and ability to surge on these items. We can still surge. This is not bloody rocket science. If we start today, we can have factories in a month. We should be surging on this today. We should have been surging on this since January and not have to deal with a shortage of bloody test swabs. I know raw materials and equipment are in short supply. But if our economies are truly unable to find the necessary parts in our just-in-time inventory or storage, we as a generation should hold our heads in shame and leaders accountable.

charliewallace 7y ago

This is a project based in Ireland. For a similar US-based project, see https://www.projectopenair.org/ https://www.projectopenair.org/

thekalinga 7y ago

Went over many comments. I see many people who are worried about an opensource project because its going to throw the apple cart of existing price gouging players in the market, but they are not open about it This is an excellent foray of opensource into a space thats currently extorting people to live, i.e medical industry