Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pandemic Ventilator Project

panvent.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 111 posts

Re: Pandemic Ventilator Project

#81

Post by 01100011 »

yourapostasy wrote: post #76
projektfu wrote: post #29

I would imagine an epidemic of ventilator associated lung injury if people started rolling out homemade ventilators in quantity.

Please don't take this as a personal address to your specific comment. Yours was simply the last drop of water that tipped the scales in me to comment on an overall trend I'm seeing. What I'm beginning to see in a lot of these types of discussions is those calling for caution/compliance are missing the term "in extremis". I've seen no one is suggesting that these DIY/hacking efforts of all stripes replace the existin…

Yeah but there is a non-zero portion of the population that may choose to use a home-brew solution instead of seeking proper medical care. Sure, we want to give people tools to be self-sufficient, but we don't want billybob hooking grandma up to the vacuum cleaner to save money.

Re: Pandemic Ventilator Project

#82

Post by DataDrivenMD »

rectang wrote: post #78
DataDrivenMD wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweet. Looked into the KWA's site, seems like a clear use-case. If we were to break down the build into achievable chunks we may have more success, and have a bigger impact along the way. There's an immediate need for a single source of truth for all the locations where COVID-19 testing is available. Trump said Google was building it, but turns out they are weeks away from an MVP that would only cover the SF Bay Area…

> There's an immediate need for a single source of truth for all the locations where COVID-19 testing is available. Seems like that could be achieved with a static HTML website, possibly augmented with a REST API. I doubt that information is changing very quickly. It could theoretically even be committed to a Git repo in a CSV file. However, although that would work for generating a website, it wouldn't be clone-able…

I posted the call to action here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22577611

There was a word limit, so I had to comment on my own post to share full details. Sorry, not sorry HN mods ;-)

Re: Pandemic Ventilator Project

#83

Post by klipt »

nerfhammer wrote: post #80
klipt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we'd need to get the government to pay them to ramp up production, otherwise they might go bankrupt producing more ventilators than end up being needed. Paying for "insurance" in the form of extra ventilators should probably be done by the government, not by a corporation.

I don't think there's a big risk they'll have trouble selling ventilators

If you Google "buy ICU ventilator" there are tons of sources purportedly selling them, no idea which ones are legit though.

Re: Pandemic Ventilator Project

#84

Post by mNovak »

DataDrivenMD wrote: post #70
rectang wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally: My mother is a retired RN with an "inactive" license in Washington state. She does elder care as a side gig for individual clients. She recently had to turn someone down because the patient was intubated; it's not legal for her to care for such a patient. If anything went wrong she could be both at risk of a lawsuit and in trouble with the state for practicing medicine without a license. (She's also in h…

You raise a related issue, which is critical to address as well. That is, we need people to help manage patients before, during, and after their hospital stay. I’m less concerned about the licensing issues because public health emergency declarations make it possible for state officials to clear the way for someone like your mom. Where you, and fellow hackers can help, is by offering tech solutions that solve the iss…

This reminds me of an app a friend of mine made for finding and coordinating volunteers: https://pointapp.org/

It's focused on non-skilled volunteering, but would seem easy enough to add and match qualifiers (e.g. medical skillsets) between organizations and volunteers.

Re: Pandemic Ventilator Project

#85

Post by DataDrivenMD »

rectang wrote: post #78
DataDrivenMD wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweet. Looked into the KWA's site, seems like a clear use-case. If we were to break down the build into achievable chunks we may have more success, and have a bigger impact along the way. There's an immediate need for a single source of truth for all the locations where COVID-19 testing is available. Trump said Google was building it, but turns out they are weeks away from an MVP that would only cover the SF Bay Area…

> There's an immediate need for a single source of truth for all the locations where COVID-19 testing is available. Seems like that could be achieved with a static HTML website, possibly augmented with a REST API. I doubt that information is changing very quickly. It could theoretically even be committed to a Git repo in a CSV file. However, although that would work for generating a website, it wouldn't be clone-able…

> That seems like a harder problem because of patient privacy issues.

Agreed, but even a simple honor system would be better than the current situation. Perhaps verified via a simple browser-based cookie?

Separately: just dawned on me that HN has no obvious way for users to communicate directly. Any suggestions on how to share contact info without begging for spam/bots?

Re: Pandemic Ventilator Project

#86

Post by bacon_waffle »

sigmaprimus wrote: post #2

Good idea using a large AC blower. I would think a small brand new or very clean wet dry shop, vac using the blower attachment might be even better. It would be noisy but would allow the design to incorporate negative pressure of the vacuum side to assist with exhaling. Maybe the shop vac could be plugged into a speed controller to improve duty cycle and reduce noise but controlling an AC motors speed is quite a bit…

> It would be noisy...

> controlling an AC motors speed is quite a bit more complicated(expensive) than controlling a DC one.

That type of motor is so noisy because it's a universal motor[1] - they can be controlled with light dimmer type circuit[2], but they're basically always noisy and inefficient.

A cordless drill would be a good starting point for a variable speed power train.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_motor

[2] If you're actually using a light dimmer to control a universal motor, use the highest current rated dimmer possible. The motor will be more inductive than the typical lighting circuit that the dimmer is designed for.

Re: Pandemic Ventilator Project

#87

Post by klipt »

ozi wrote: post #79
pujjad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone dear to me needs a ventilator per tracheostomy (Trilogy 100). Her Consultant Aenesthesist who was in Italy four weeks ago and works on an Intensive Care Unit told me that 6 out 10 Covid-19 affected ITU patients require an ECMO ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxyg... ). This is very bad. I could sense his unease, these are machines you don't come by easily. His ITU is preparing for wa…

Most hospitals have just a handful of ECMO machines, if any. And most of them are talking about not providing ECMO to COViD-19 patients because of this.

This article says an ECMO machine costs less than $50k: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-03-13-000314...

That seems low relative to US medical costs in general. I'm sure the average Bay Area software engineer would happily pay that much to save a dying family member.

Re: Pandemic Ventilator Project

#89

Post by MockObject »

01100011 wrote: post #81
yourapostasy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take this as a personal address to your specific comment. Yours was simply the last drop of water that tipped the scales in me to comment on an overall trend I'm seeing. What I'm beginning to see in a lot of these types of discussions is those calling for caution/compliance are missing the term "in extremis". I've seen no one is suggesting that these DIY/hacking efforts of all stripes replace the existin…

Yeah but there is a non-zero portion of the population that may choose to use a home-brew solution instead of seeking proper medical care. Sure, we want to give people tools to be self-sufficient, but we don't want billybob hooking grandma up to the vacuum cleaner to save money.

> What doesn't help improve our probabilities nor mesh with my personal philosophy is giving criticisms with either no alternatives or no position statement of what you believe is an acceptable protocol going forward.

Re: Pandemic Ventilator Project

#90

Post by MockObject »

westurner wrote: post #9
enchiridion wrote: post #4

https://www.projectopenair.org/

> https://www.projectopenair.org/ From https://app.jogl.io/project/121#about >> Current Status of the project >> The main bottleneck currently (2020-03-13) is organization / management. >> […] This is an organization of experts and hobbyists from around the globe.

The link https://app.jogl.io/project/121#about doesn't go anywhere anymore. And there are no results for "ventilator" in the app.jogl.io search.
Post reply on HN