- [Narrator] Ventilators have emerged
as a crucial weapon in
hospital coronavirus treatment.
They move air in and out of the lungs
for critically ill
patients whose infections
have made it impossible
to breathe on their own.
But hospitals around
the world are struggling
with ventilator shortages,
and manufacturing efforts
aren't moving fast enough
to meet the rising need.
This has spurred a number of engineers,
universities, and medical
professionals into action.
For several weeks, they've been gathering
in Facebook groups, Slack
channels, and websites
to share expertise, ideas, and designs
for homemade ventilators.
- And then it goes into
one of these valves here
which controls inflating
these bags at the back.
- [Narrator] But will any
of these open source plans
ever turn into real ventilators
that actually help save lives?
MIT recently launched this website
to resurface a 10-year old project
to automate a hand-pumped ventilator
also known as a manual resuscitator.
In 2010, they published a paper
detailing their design and testing.
Now, a group of engineers
and medical professionals in Colombia
are using MIT's plans in an effort
to mass produce emergency
ventilators in Medellin.
- The idea is try to get
some machines together
that they can make at a cost of about
a thousand, $1300, something like that.
And this is a machine
that's actually far simpler
than the machines that
you might find, say,
in a hospital right now
in Bogota or New York
or in Mexico City,
'coz they can cost, 30,
35,000, 45,000 dollars.
These are definitely, sort
of, emergency machines.
- [Narrator] The current
unprecedented global demand
has made importing ventilators
or even their parts
difficult everywhere,
and virtually impossible
in developing countries like Colombia.
INNSPIRAMED has partnered with a number
of domestic automotive and
homoplants manufacturers
to build locally.
They're also working
with Colombia's version
of the FDA, called Invima,
to make sure their devices meet all
of the country's federal safety standards.
- They're having discussions with them,
they're having to turn in paperwork
and get approval for the next step,
to test these prototypes on human beings.
And if that works well,
then they will be getting the approval
to produce these in the
factories in Medellin.
- INNSPIRAMED hopes Invima
approval moves quickly enough
to have 1500 machines
manufactured and operating
in hospitals by May,
when epidemiologists predict
Colombia will hit the peak
of coronavirus infections.
In other parts of the world
another group of medical
professionals, academics
and engineers recently published
a different proof-of-concept
for an emergency ventilator
that can be built without
the help of local
manufacturers or factories.
- We sit with the doctors
in the beginning and we say,
"Okay, give us the medical minimum
"that a ventilator needs to achieve."
And we'll strip down
and try to design a
machine that was so simple
that you can build it
everywhere in the world.
This is a last-resort machine.
- [Narrator] Unregulated and
more widely available materials
mean an even more accessible ventilator,
but there are risks
that come with using parts
like construction materials
in a medical setting.
Regulations for medical
equipment are much more stringent
than for commercial hardware.
- Just the level of testing,
the level of reliability, redundancy
duration of use, the duty cycle,
and how long things are
expected to perform,
they're different for different settings.
- [Narrator] Dr Pankaj Merchia worries
that some of these open
source ventilator systems
could fail in practice,
even after successful
tests with the prototype.
- What you're turning on and off,
your gardening sprinklers
or your lawn sprinkler
once a week,
they just aren't designed to
do this 20,000 times a day
without missing a breath.
- [Narrator] Dr Merchia is
working on developing adaptors
to repurpose CPAP machines as ventilators.
CPAP machines, which
are much less expensive
and more common than ventilators,
help patients with sleep apnoea maintain
a steady breathing pattern
throughout the night.
- [Pankaj] There're about
60 million Americans
who have sleep apnoea,
and there's over a million
of these machines currently
in the United States.
- We're converting the BiPAP machines.
- [Narrator] New York
governor, Andrew Cuomo,
recently announced state
department health approval
and plans to convert BiPAP machines,
which are similar to
CPAPs, into ventilators.
And while this kind of
solution makes sense
for places like the US,
it doesn't help solve shortage problems
in areas lacking these sleep aid devices.
- If you have nothing available
and you're in a battlefield
and someone gets shot by a bullet,
instead of using a pre-formed tourniquet,
if you take off your
own belt to prevent them
from bleeding out and dying,
that's okay, because you had
nothing better available.
So, depending upon what's available to you
in the healthcare system
where you're located,
available in that it's
there now, when you need it,
you have to make the
best choice available.
(gurgling water)
