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Tesla Ventilator

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Re: Tesla Ventilator

#131

Post by gamblor956 »

djoldman wrote: post #39
pdq wrote: post #27

Yes, this is an impressive amount of work done in a few weeks by a small team at Tesla. However, medical devices, especially for life support systems, are not a Hackathon project. These devices breathe air into patients lungs. They need to be manufactured in clean room conditions, with medical grade parts, not plumbing parts from a big box store. They must be designed and tested to ISO specifications. If this fails,…

If a doctor believes it is 99% likely that a patient will die without a ventilator and none are available, then why wouldn't they try something like the one from Tesla? A choice between almost certain death and possible life isn't really a choice.

For starters, if they had to make that choice they'd just use one of the many CPAP or BiPAP machines already available in the hospitals. Even though this would render the machine single-patient only (since they generally can't be sanitized to acceptable levels for re-use without being partially dissembled) we don't have a shortage of those devices.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#132

Post by [deleted] »

m463 wrote: post #75
pdq wrote: post #27

Yes, this is an impressive amount of work done in a few weeks by a small team at Tesla. However, medical devices, especially for life support systems, are not a Hackathon project. These devices breathe air into patients lungs. They need to be manufactured in clean room conditions, with medical grade parts, not plumbing parts from a big box store. They must be designed and tested to ISO specifications. If this fails,…

You are basically saying "do no harm" If it becomes a battlefield medicine situation, what should happen? I remember reading that during WW2 when there was no penicillin, nurses would inject milk I believe into patients, hoping it would stimulate an immune response and save the patient. Seems kind of risky, what are the ethics? What should we do if we run out of ventilators?

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#133

Post by [deleted] »

nabla9 wrote: post #89
pdq wrote: post #27

Yes, this is an impressive amount of work done in a few weeks by a small team at Tesla. However, medical devices, especially for life support systems, are not a Hackathon project. These devices breathe air into patients lungs. They need to be manufactured in clean room conditions, with medical grade parts, not plumbing parts from a big box store. They must be designed and tested to ISO specifications. If this fails,…

This is not work from scratch. Tesla partnered with Medtronic https://www.medtronic.com/us-en/index.html It seems that they also work as parts supplier for Medtronic.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#134

Post by fzeroracer »

natch wrote: post #80
pdq wrote: post #27

Yes, this is an impressive amount of work done in a few weeks by a small team at Tesla. However, medical devices, especially for life support systems, are not a Hackathon project. These devices breathe air into patients lungs. They need to be manufactured in clean room conditions, with medical grade parts, not plumbing parts from a big box store. They must be designed and tested to ISO specifications. If this fails,…

So discouraging to see such low quality and cynical comments at the top level here. It's been made very clear over the weeks here on HN how Tesla and SpaceX between them, with their overlapping engineering resources (Elon, for example) have deep experience with life support systems, at a level approved by NASA even. To diss their work as a hackathon project is pretty low. It's also been widely discussed that this cri…

> various types of the specific breathing devices asked for by medical facilities

It's interesting that this is the spin you've decided to put on Elon donating the incorrect type of medical device to hospitals and then attempting to pass those off as ventilators. People have grown cynical because of Elon's own self-serving behavior and twitter publicity stunts evaporating any potential good faith meaning to his actions.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#135

Post by salvagedcircuit »

This is pretty excellent. It is one of the first ventilator solutions that actually implements appropriate air sensors, a PEEP function and air flow monitoring. Hats off to the tesla engineers for throwing this together so quickly. It's pretty neat that so many car parts could be reused. I can imagine they are finalizing the software interface and optimizing the machining process to reduce the cut time on the custom manifold production. Again, awesome job guys!

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#136

Post by ardy42 »

HideousKojima wrote: post #121
rumanator wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does the video linked look like the result of "an all nighter and a 3D printer" to you? As you might understand from the language used and your failure to see a 3D printer, my description is what you may describe as a hyperbole. But still, to put it in terms you might better understand, why do you think that medical devices take years to design and develop and get to the market? There are more things to it other th…

>But still, to put it in terms you might better understand, why do you think that medical devices take years to design and develop and get to the market? Because of insane regulatory hurdles, and a refusal to adopt standards accepted by other nations' comparable regulatory agencies? See, for example, KN95 masks. Or for a non-coronavirus example, look at how slow the FDA has been to approve SLIT immunotherapy methods…

> See, for example, KN95 masks.

IIRC, the issue with KN95 respirators is not the standard itself, but a massive problem with not-up-to-spec counterfeits being offered on the market.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#137

Post by xkjkls »

pdq wrote: post #27

Yes, this is an impressive amount of work done in a few weeks by a small team at Tesla. However, medical devices, especially for life support systems, are not a Hackathon project. These devices breathe air into patients lungs. They need to be manufactured in clean room conditions, with medical grade parts, not plumbing parts from a big box store. They must be designed and tested to ISO specifications. If this fails,…

This is an entirely self-serving PR move. Anyone at Tesla knows that getting government approval on any sort of ventilator they construct will require at least 6 months, probably 12, of rigorous testing. This isn't doing anything to truly solve this crisis.

Partnering or giving resources to companies that already have approved ventilator designs would by far be more helpful.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#138

Post by xkjkls »

rumanator wrote: post #76
heleninboodler wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, medical devices, especially for life support systems, are not a Hackathon project. This effort they're doing really doesn't seem like they're treating it like a "Hackathon" project. They're putting real engineering resources behind it. Whether or not they can produce something in time is still up in the air, but it seems to me Musk is attacking the problem from several different angles and hoping something…

> This effort they're doing really doesn't seem like they're treating it like a "Hackathon" project. They're putting real engineering resources behind it. Engineers can and do hackathon work, but real engineering work is way more about verification and validation than hacking stuff together. Products need to ensure that they will work reliably within all operational limits. You don't ensure that with an all nighter a…

And you need a rigorous process to insure they can be actually manufactured to specifications at scale. Which is why medical devices require so many layers of approval.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#139

Post by xkjkls »

nsxwolf wrote: post #37

Are ventilators even helping? I see numbers like a 30% survival rate in some places, but they don't mention if that means "aren't dead yet" or recovered and removed from the ventilator. I definitely read about people who have successfully been removed and are recovering, but that's all anecdotal.

The 30% survival rate means that 30% of patients are saved by ventilators. People who aren't dying without a ventilator aren't put on a ventilator, which is an extremely invasive medical procedure.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#140

Post by xkjkls »

gok wrote: post #129

The FDA would take years to approve a new ventilator that was an old one with a new paint color. A new design like this would probably be approved for use in US hospitals around 2025 if they're lucky. Might be useful sooner in a country with a more functional administrative state.

There are many reasons for long testing on medical supplies. While there might be some laxing of them for a "hail mary pass" in the situation we are currently in, we shouldn't claim that equipment shouldn't have validation.
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