RespiraWorks Open Source Ventilator

We are a team with backgrounds in medical devices, quality assurance, nuclear power, submarine life and project management. We're located in Berkeley, Denver, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, and places around the world. We're working on an emergency ventilator to address the looming shortage in the developing world. 

Our efforts started when a doctor sent us a plan for a DIY ventilator. She knew her hospital was going to run out of ventilators as COVID 19 cases rose—leading to a situation where she would to choose who survives and who doesn't. This is a reality. 

We set out to create a ventilator that is easy to build, affordable, and at the same time feasible to be put together in the developing world (taking into account supply chain/tooling restrictions). 

We, the world, needs us to get this done. This won't be solved by one solution, or one team, or one product. But so far if anything else this project has already shown me the incredible altruism that we can muster when faced with a threat of this magnitude. Join us today, donate to help us getting through the testing phase and get our local supply chain off the ground in parallel.

There are a lot of amazing  teams out there working on Ventilators, what makes this one different?
We should always be on the lookout to see if something that can help more people sooner is out there, We also need to understand where there is an unmet need and how we can add something new that provides value to humanity. What I have seen is that most teams are tackling the "bridge" ventilator problem: how can we make something that keeps someone alive, maybe for 6-8 hours of closely monitored care before they can make it to a full ventilator. The problem is, for a disease like COVID-19, lung-protective ventilation strategies are needed, and patients will need to be on a ventilator for days, to weeks at a time. We have yet to see a team that is tackling the longer term lung protective ventilator issue in an open source, supply chain optimized manner. Partly because in wealthy countries that will not be as large of a shortage and the regulatory hurdle is much higher. But that shortage definitely exists around the world. That's where this engineering team provides value. 

We're aiming for a product that is middle of the road, not a full-capability vent, but also not the cheapest possible thing, one that provides patient monitoring, adaptive ventilation strategies (initially targeting PRVC) and a quality record design process. We'd be super excited if another team was tackling the same problem, but as time has gone on, we think we have the most credible pathway to get there from an engineering side and so we're going to keep pushing forward. Cases may peak in wealthy countries in the next 5-6 weeks, and we won't be ready in that time, but the developing world is going to be dealing with Cov-19 for a much longer time and has a much larger backlog of medical devices, so we're pushing forward.

Campaign Funds Statement:
Especially in these difficult times, we wanted to be clear to everyone exactly how your money will be used. First this money has been and will be used to purchase and test initial prototypes, as well as support the software development, fabrication, and initial qualification. This is expected to be less than the funds raised since most of the engineering is being donated at no cost to us (thanks again to our corporate partners). All funds will be withdrawn by me into my personal bank account and distributed to our prototype engineers. Additional funds remaining will be used to ship either complete prototypes or prototype parts to our partners in Guatemala, who may also require expenditures on local help to finish assembly, fabrication, and distribution if they cannot be found for free. All this money will run through me for now. If at the end, we have funds remaining, we will likely use to to purchase PPE or other needed medical supplies for Hospitalito Atitlan or another local hospital if our partners there feel there is a greater need/benefit to a similar hospital (it may be the case that most coronavirus patients are transferred to more advanced hospitals).