Great article and video by The Verge Science on how the maker community is stepping up to fight COVID-19.

See more and a bit about our automated resuscitator here:
https://www.theverge.com/science/2020/4/27/21231485/covid-19-3d-printing-ppe-crowdsourcing-diy-maker

Great piece this morning on Boston NPR station WBUR! Thanks Carey Goldberg!
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/03/31/how-to-make-a-simple-ventilator-open-design

So glad there is such a concerted joint effort from many sites to solve these problems!!

Coming along...

Just a quick update -

The team is making great progress!! We hope to have some designs posted shortly. We are taking a modular approach, and the individual modules will be posted as they are ready, and we invite feedback to help iterate rapidly on the designs.

Forthcoming are a number of BVM compression approaches (which cover different capabilities for manufacturing available), a modular valve and filtration system that can be used with our BVM or other ventilator systems (home-brew & commercial), and also a modular gas sensor unit for assessing adequacy of ventilation.

Please reach out to info@autobvm.org to get engaged!

Repository Created

Just created our GitHub repository. This is where the open source designs will be placed for distribution when ready:
https://github.com/WPI-AIM/AutoBVM

Please also contact us at info@autobvm.org if you would like to contribute to development, validation, and/or manufacturing.

Welcome!

Welcome to the AutoBVM project's website. This effort is focused on developing and distributing low cost, readily available, highly portable, and easy-to-use ventilators. To enhance safety, availability, and acceptance by the clinical community, our system is based upon adding a reusable actuation and sensing system to a variety of standard Bag-Valve-Mask (BVM) mechanical ventilators often used in emergency medicine.

This effort was initiated in response to ventilator shortages due to the coronavirus disease COVID-19 by a group of faculty and students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and is affiliated with and supported by :

• Dr. Fischer's Automation and International Medicine Robotics Research Laboratory (AIM Lab)
• The WPI Robotics Engineering (RBE) Program 
• The MassTech-supported PracticePoint Medical Cyber-Physical System R&D Center at WPI

  

PracticePoint is WPI’s membership-based development and testing facility. The goal of this alliance space is to advance healthcare technologies and launch better medical cyber- physical systems through collaboration across the spectrum of product development and implementation; it is a resource for designing, prototyping, and evaluating various medical devices along with an associated consortium of academics, industry, healthcare professionals, and users/patients. This includes a wide spectrum from rehabilitative devices to surgical robotics.

The facility comprises point-of-practice clinical care scenarios, including a fully instrumented living space, state-of-the-art motion capture lab, 2-bed modular patient care suite, MRI imaging, and a fully functional operating room co-located with advanced manufacturing capabilities, including a wide array of 3D printing, CNC manufacturing, and electronics assembly equipment and test capabilities.

For information or to get involved, please contact us at:

info@autobvm.org