Hack the Crisis: Low-cost ventilator initiative will address COVID-19 issues

VentLife, a non-profit under the umbrella group the Giving Back Fund, has developed a novel mechanical ventilator specifically targeted to meet the needs of COVID-19 patients. Based on first principles, with input from over a dozen medical doctors, engineers, and entrepreneurs, the device has been designed to work effectively at a low cost. The VentLife team is located all over the U.S. and is led by Glen Meyerowitz – a former Space X engineer, now graduate student in Electrical and Computer Engineering. VentLife is seeking funding and partnerships to bring this device to market as quickly as possible.

It is well known that there are not enough ventilators to support the current, and upcoming, number of patients in the U.S. and abroad. “COVID-19 is ravaging fragile health care systems across the globe. Strained healthcare workers are triaging care to select which patients will live and which will die, due to severely limited resources. We aim to provide lifesaving equipment to clinicians so they never need to make such choices again and so they can properly perform their jobs,” said Meyerowitz.

Part of the reason for the shortage of equipment is the complexity in design of current ventilators – most ventilators are designed to cover 99% of respiratory ailments. Covering the whole gamut of respiratory issues adds many components, creates difficulty in sourcing materials, and makes for costly design and manufacturing. Meyerowitz, and the VentLife team, have built a working benchtop model from easily sourced materials that can be manufactured, tested, and mass produced quickly.

VentLife has designed the ventilator to treat specific respiratory issues caused by COVID-19 – this drastically reduces the complexity and costliness of prototyping, clinical testing, and manufacturing.

You can learn more about the project, team, and how to donate through their site, https://www.ventlife.org/ , and donate through one of their crowdsourcing channels: Indigogo: https://lnkd.in/gW-Fm8K and WeFunder: https://wefunder.com/VentLife or donate right through their site: https://www.ventlife.org/donate