Can Open Source Hardware Mechanical Ventilator (OSH-MVs) initiatives help cope with the COVID-19 health crisis? Taxonomy and state of the art
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1-s2.0-S2468067220300596-main.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.79 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
cfc9b7cb76d2226dfe10f778cacd1bfb
Author(s)
Mora, Simone
Duarte, Fábio
Ratti, Carlo
Date Issued
October 2020
Journal
HardwareX
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Mora, Simone et al. "Can Open Source Hardware Mechanical Ventilator (OSH-MVs) initiatives help cope with the COVID-19 health crisis? Taxonomy and state of the art." HardwareX 8 (October 2020): e00150.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The field of Open Source Hardware Mechanical Ventilators (OSH-MVs) has seen a steep rise of contributions during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. As predictions showed that the number of patients would exceed current supply of hospital-grade ventilators, a number of formal (academia, the industry and governments) and informal (fablabs and startups) entities raced to develop cheap, easy-to-fabricate mechanical ventilators. The presence of actors with very diverse modus operandi as well as the speed at which the field has grown, led to a fragmented design space characterized by a lack of clear design patterns, projects not meeting the minimum functional requirements or showing little-to-no innovation; but also valid alternatives to hospital-grade devices. In this paper we provide a taxonomic system to help researchers with no background in biomedical engineering to read, understand and contribute to the OSH-MV field. The taxonomy is composed of ten properties that are read through the lenses of three reflection criteria: buildability, adoptability and scalability. We applied the taxonomy to the analysis of seventeen OSH-MV projects, which are representative of the current landscape of possibilities available for COVID-19 patients. We discuss the different design choices adopted by each project highlighting strengths and weaknesses and we suggest possible directions for the development of the OSH-MV field.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SENSEable City Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2020.e00150
