This is what should be expected in days like these. Maybe some of the very bright people in this forum could help, or get in touch with some who could help!Doctors, engineers, designers and more professional volunteers have started to organize themselves telematically to develop cheap and fast ventilation solutions for patients infected with coronavirus. Respirators are a necessary input to care for those affected, who arrive with symptoms such as fever and dry cough, and could double in the coming days in Spain, according to the government. Faced with a possible scenario in which these high-tech devices are missing, experts are seeking to provide open source plans to replicate the simplest devices easily.
Jorge Barrero @Jorge_barrero_f
Esta mañana 25 médicos, ingenieros, emprendedores, makers hemos creado un grupo de WhatsApp para pensar posibles soluciones baratas y rápidas de ventilación de pacientes. Ahora descubro no estamos solos... nos sumamos a Open Source Ventilator Project! #cheapVentilators
https://twitter.com/ColinJ_Keogh/status/1237865545623461891 …
Colin Keogh 🛠 @ColinJ_Keogh
Calling all #doctors, #Engineers and #Designers? Join the amazing Open Source Ventilator Project to give your time and expertise to help develop low-cost ventilators to fight #COVID19.
I joined the fight via
https://bit.ly/3cMLUwJ #coronavirus #COVID2019IRELAND #technology
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As the number of infected people in the country grows and hospitals fill up, the conversation in a Telegram group that already has more than 580 participants did not stop this Friday morning. Dozens of professionals were racing against the clock to develop a cheap, simple-to-use and easy-to-manufacture device:
-I'm now taking the fan model and modifying it to make an outline; I already have the pseudo code of the software.
-We need someone with knowledge of pneumology.
-Should it mimic a typical bottle respirator? -I'm not sure.
-I have a 3-D printer, if that's what it takes.
The ideas added up; there were moments of "chaos", according to some participants; someone created an Excel of volunteers that grew with the passing of the hours; an anaesthetist from Tenerife and an engineer from Geneva signed up; suddenly, someone began to speak in English; videos from Youtube were exchanged about past solutions, information from printed manuals, hand sketches... Reflection advanced.
"There are many people who are very interested in doing something. So putting collective intelligence to work is not a bad thing," says David Cuartielles, an engineer and founder of Arduino, a free software and hardware development company. He adds: "It serves as a catharsis, but it can also help to arrive at a valid technical solution.
In the next few days, there will be more people infected with coronavirus, according to the Ministry of Health. The president, Pedro Sánchez, has declared a state of alarm for 15 days and does not rule out that the number of infected people will reach 10,000 next week. In Madrid, for example, where almost half of the infections in Spain are concentrated, the regional executive has announced that hotels, residences and homes will begin to function as makeshift hospitals.
"If we witness a very high peak, the capacities to provide assistance are limited because equipment is very expensive and hospitals cannot have hundreds of teams waiting for a pandemic outbreak. Hence the question: can we do something perhaps not so sophisticated but which solves or helps in this situation," biochemist Jorge Barrero, director of the Cotec Foundation and promoter of another initiative called Innovative Breathing Assistance (IBA), questioned this Thursday.
The biochemist was "desperate" after a week at home and concerned about "being useful" in this pandemic, which has killed more than 5,000 people worldwide. He contacted three experts, who believed that it was possible to develop or adapt some "not-so-advanced" technology to provide an emergency service, and set up a WhatsApp team, which soon grew to include about twenty other professionals.
In less than 24 hours, they defined three lines of action with parallel roadmaps to look for "diverse solutions". They are working on it. One line of work aims to develop simple, cheap, rapid manufacturing and distribution systems from scratch; another seeks to adapt pre-existing technology, such as that used by apnoea sufferers; the last one aims to support the industry that manufactures these devices to "get there sooner and with more" supplies.
A hundred experts - some "from the trenches" and others from home - have made themselves available to this initiative, according to Barrero, and are now being organised under the coordination of Tecnalia, a public technology centre in the Basque Country. The development has just begun. "There is no solution, there is a team analysing various strategies. It may be that an interesting result will be reached, several or none", says Barrero.
The biochemist points out that "there are several technologies" that the experts will be able to contemplate. "For example, there are systems that can be used only with the patient asleep; others that can be used with the patient awake, but not for long; some are more efficient, others are simpler to manufacture or less expensive... There is a whole world and the debate now is where we are going to aim the shot to make some useful contribution.
More professionals are working from other groups, although in the same direction and connected. "People keep writing and they've managed themselves. It's nice to see how they have come together," says Esther Borao, an industrial engineer specializing in automation and robotics and director of the Instituto Tecnológico de Aragón, which created the Telegram group that brings together 580 professionals almost in parallel to Borrero.
Borao points out that "there are many challenges" now, but stresses that "the biggest" is that "people are at home so that there are no more infections and hospitals are not saturated. "I hope we don't need respirators," he said.
In other countries, such as the United States and China, similar initiatives have been launched almost at the same time and, on Twitter, the English hashtag #cheapventilators (cheap respirators, in Spanish) has emerged. "We are not alone. If it's not us, someone will get an answer. It's about working in cooperation," Barrero says.
"We have to understand that we are all connected and that the virus' capacity to infect is the same that we have to achieve so that the right messages are spread and the initiatives escalate," defends the biochemist. Barrero assures that to "fight the virus" it is important to act "as a single super-organism": "We cannot live this as an individual disease, because it is not".
Translated with the help of Deepl, from "eldiario.es"