Medtronic, an actual ventilator company, has published the full** specifications for one of their actual ventilators, including requirements and other super detailed manufacturer specification document thingies. I’m a software guy, but I read through some of it because I was curious and… wow, I’m glad I don’t work on medical devices at my day job.
Now, I suspect 99.9% of the people that are reading this post should in fact NOT go and build a ventilator! However, for those with too much time on their hands and want to see what professionals have to do to make something like this – I expect reading through the specs would be a great learning experience for many many people on this forum.
Enjoy!
** I’ve been told some pieces are missing, but their intent is to release everything required to make one, including software.
It’s an interesting read, but for the record no one here should be building a respirator to be used on a human patient without the proper equipment and help from people who actually know what they’re doing. It’s just too dangerous even with the ventilator shortage we’re facing.
Indeed. I found it an interesting read for sure - if anything, it re-affirmed exactly how far away from the “real deal” many of the proposed solutions actually are.
Getting to the point where something like this is even contemplated is one indication that these are not normal circumstances. The MIT collaboration is worth following, and my guess is that it will save lives. The site does a nice job of raising many of these considerations, with links to additional information.
I understand and deeply empathize with the desire to help that everyone has. If this were just an issue of us not having had the capacity to make these items, or us turning existing capacity toward these items, that would be one thing. But how do we face the issue that the companies that make these products are a big part of what got us in this shortage in the first place? That shortages were induced by the actions of the businesses we buy the products from?
