| There has been some discussion on 3D printing medical ventilators on the local hackerspace mailing list.
One of the participants used to work at a company which builds those and made similar points: There are different systems, one are the C/VPAP which are only for ventilation during sleep, avoiding a closure of the pharynx by increasing the pressure to a certain maximum value. Some of those have parameters also taking care of the patient's breathing pressure etc. but in general can only help for "better sleep" – if they fail, then you have a bad sleep but won't die. The systems they use in hospitals are the complex machines you describe: they have battery power, measure the flow of breath, have alarms etc. Even here they distinguish between "supported breathing" and "keeping alive", i.e. in the former case the machine helps you to breathe while the second takes care of breathing for you. In Italy, a doctor asked for a replacement part of their ventilators which was then 3D printed – the valves mentioned in the article. This seems to have led to a surge in people now trying to build, design, etc. ventilators which can essentially be build anywhere, to combat supply chain shortages. Again: You are right, medical ventilators are a tricky business and difficult to build. But in this case, the ventilators seem to be there, they just need the valves, which can be printed. And they put up a huge disclaimer that patients need to agree to use unapproved devices. A German article covering this is [1]. [1] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kreative-loesungen-in-zeiten-... |