RespiraWorks and BostonVent are merging!
We are excited to announce that we are combining forces with BostonVent!
BostonVent brings more than 35 years of combined FDA experience, and their anesthesiologists have extensive experience in ICU and pre-hospital care. Their volunteers are professionally affiliated with Harvard Medical School and MIT.
BostonVent's goals resonate with our own. Both our designs are open-source and aimed at helping developing countries. We are thrilled to combine their expertise with the knowledge base of RespiraWorks' engineers and physicians, who include volunteers from Stanford, Caltech, and dozens of other universities and think tanks from around the world.
Together, we are dedicated to building an affordable open-source ventilator for anyone in need.
Collaboration with India: Milestones
Our collaboration with our team in India, FoundryM, has made great strides towards developing and deploying ventilators in that country! The India team has accomplished many milestones, including building our first fully-enclosed ventilator, revising the enclosure design, developing test code for performance and qualification tests of individual components, designing customized fittings, achieving oxygen control, implementing a communication alarm, and finalizing PCB schematics. They have also found local sources in India for many ventilator components, which will allow them to ramp up production in their home country - a crucial step, as India will need more ventilators in the coming season to combat COVID-19. Goals in the future include implementation of built-in battery backup and additional ventilation modes. FoundryM is supported by AMTZ, a research and development institution park and medical device incubation center set up by the Government of Andhra Pradesh in India.
Fundraising Art Auction!
Please join us for a fundraising virtual art auction! Bidding is open until 6 pm PST / 9 pm EST / 1 am UTC today. All proceeds go towards ventilator and PAPR design and production, in support of our efforts to get these crucial medical supplies to hospitals in need.
Special thanks go out to all the artists who generously donated art for this auction. We are grateful for your support!
Update: The auction has finished! Thank you to all the participants. Please contact [email protected] if you would like to contribute to auctions in the future, or if you have any questions about your bids. We appreciate your support!
PAPR Test Run Complete
Our first test run of 5 PAPR units is complete!
Quantitative testing using the particle counter shows an ambient count of 76,500 counts/cm³ (due to the fires in California, there are many particulates in the ambient air), while the PAPR passes only 61.20 counts/cm³ of those particulates. This is 99.92% of particulates being filtered out, in line with the P100 (i.e. 99.9%) rating of the filter cartridge, demonstrating that there are no leaks in the design.
We have deployed these units to our beta users, who will be evaluating each PAPR for comfort, durability, and ease of use.
RespiraWorks Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) is nearly complete!
The RespiraWorks Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) project is nearing completion!
It’s all here:
https://github.com/RespiraWork...
On the project page, you can now find complete mechanical and electrical assembly instructions, including 3D print files and parts lists with purchase links. There are also parts and instructions for modifying the 6100/6200/6300 respirator (shown here) for use with the PAPR, making it into a fully 2-way (inhale/exhale) filtering powered respirator.
If anyone builds one of these, please feel free to send questions and comments so that we can improve the design. Anyone who wants to contribute more substantially to the design, please consider joining RespiraWorks at https://respira.works/join-us. Not only are we designing this PAPR, we are also designing an open-source, fully featured ICU ventilator!
RespiraWorks Places 3rd in CoVent-19 Challenge; Oxygen Control; India Collaboration
Since our last update, RespiraWorks placed 3rd in the CoVent-19 Ventilator Challenge, winning a prize of $1000 from Stratasys for 3D custom printing and additive manufacturing!
Additionally, we have added oxygen control functionality to the ventilator. In previous videos, we have shown the ventilator working with pure oxygen and ambient air (21% oxygen). We now have the ability to do closed loop control to deliver any mix of 21% oxygen at ambient to 100% oxygen; with this new update, the ventilator can now respond to oxygen concentration and pressure inputs simultaneously. Watch the video to see our new oxygen concentration sensor, with interface electronics allowing us to plug the sensor into our existing electronics package.
Also notable is our new proportional oxygen control solenoid. RespiraWorks has been collaborating with a team in India called FoundryM to develop this design for manufacturing there. This valve was selected and sourced locally, and the team in India sent us a sample to integrate it into our design.
Look out for future video updates. We will be showing our new PAPR (Powered Air Purifying Respirator) project in action, giving a demonstration of our patient inspiratory breath detection algorithm, and delivering updates on the ventilator enclosure.
RespiraWorks is adding a PAPR (Powered Air Purifying Respirator) to its open-source lineup!
In the configuration pictured, the respirator filters both inhaled and exhaled air to keep both the wearer and others safe. The combination of a respirator mask, powered air delivery, and commonly-available bayonet-mount filter packs provides a better face-seal, more comfortable breathing, and more reusability than disposable masks. It runs on USB-C battery packs so you can keep a spare charged and swap them out, and runs for 40 hrs+ per battery. Like the RespiraWorks Ventilator, the design is open-source and free to use or adapt. This is a work in progress, but stay tuned for further updates once final designs, parts lists, and complete instructions are published. Check out the github here.
Update on Life-Leader Testing: Pinch Valve Performance Test
After going strong for over 2.1 million cycles and nearly 600 hours of accelerated testing, the Life Leader ventilator unit is getting some much-deserved downtime as we remove the complete pinch valve assembly for performance testing. The data we take today will be compared against the performance of a brand new pinch valve to gain insight into reliability and how the valve ages over time and continuous use. 2.1 million cycles is roughly equivalent to 73 days of continuous operation at an average breathing rate of 20bpm. After the performance test is done, the valve will be returned to the Life Leader unit to continue running 24/7 as part of our ongoing reliability testing.Like the rest of the ventilator, the pinch valve design is open-source. 3D model files, bill of materials, and complete assembly instructions are available here.
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