06/04/2020
The Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies page is taking a long time to publish my post, so I'll post it here, too:
I'm tired of all the naysaying and negativity about developing a ventilator. It's just not that hard. Yes, getting FDA approval, doing it with an ISO 9000 process, and covering liability would make it nearly impossible, but those are problems for North America and Europe. When Covid goes exponential in Africa and South Asia, for example, the choice is improvised ventilators or death. As I understand it, the minimum requirements are 1) breath rate adjustment, 2) tidal volume adjustment, 3) peak pressure adjustment, 4) PEEP pressure adjustment, 5) Mandatory or patient-initiated breaths, 6) Oxygen mixture adjustment, 7) Alarm, 8) Failsafe maximum pressure adjustment. An optional enhancement is temperature and humidity control of the incoming air. The attached block diagram shows a system that will accomplish all these things with off-the-shelf components and some software.
