Designers challenged to create low-cost ventilator
EP&T Magazine
Electronics Engineering Medical Design design medical medical ventilator ventilatorCode Life Ventilator Challenge is a 2-week sprint to collect the best ideas from anywhere in the world to create or design life-saving ventilators
The Montreal General Hospital Foundation, in collaboration with the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), has launched a global innovation challenge, backed by a prize of CAD $200,000. They are calling for teams to design a simple, low-cost, easy-to-manufacture and easy-to-maintain ventilator that could be deployed anywhere needed to save lives. 
With potentially up to 70% of the population on the brink of being infected by COVID-19, worldwide health care systems will be strained beyond their limits. Even now, there aren’t enough ventilators to save everyone who needs respiratory support, and doctors are having to make agonizing decisions about whom to save. Our modern world provides the means to produce these life-saving ventilators thanks to widespread rapid manufacturing tools—3D printers, CNC machines— combined with low-cost computers (e.g. smartphones, Arduinos, etc.), but what’s missing is a design.
The challenge
The goal is to design a low-cost, simple, easy-to-use and easy-to-build ventilator that can serve the COVID patients, in an emergency timeframe. It should be easy to build locally, its functionality must be easy to verify, and must meet the design requirements specified on the challenge website.
Leading researchers and medical staff at the Montreal General Hospital have assembled a committee of expert advisors (ICU physicians, engineers, etc.) who have defined specifications for this ventilator challenge and who will be judging submissions.
The top three designs will be available for free download to anyone who needs them, saving lives immediately. Start now, we have no time to lose! See the challenge rules here.
The challenge is powered by Agorize, a leading platform for open innovation challenges.
Registration
The deadline to submit your project is March 31, 2020.
For more information and to enroll to the challenge: http://bit.ly/CodeLifeMGH
They need YOU to design a simple, functional, reliable and easy to manufacture ventilator to provide life support to COVID-19 patients anywhere in the world.
Visit: Codelife.ca
