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Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

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Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#171

Post by Jenda_ »

dmead wrote: post #165
wormyrocks wrote: post #56

Hi, I worked on this project and have a couple comments to address the issues people are raising. - There are established medical protocols to treat COVID-19 patients with BiPAP machines, including the addition of a viral filter to mitigate aerosolizing the virus. People are using these protocols now and we link to them from the site. - There are two separate firmware hacks presented. The first one modifies ~20 bytes…

i don't know what you mean by "ST" programmer, but i'm a dev and i have an aircurve 10. do you need something?

I think it means ST-Link-compatible programmer, a device used to flash/debug ST chips. You can see a big STM32 MCU on one of the FCC ID photos.

The protocol can be bitbanged over GPIO, so for example if you own a Raspberry Pi (or anything similar), all you need to do is to install openocd.

Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#172

Post by [deleted] »

dmead wrote: post #165
wormyrocks wrote: post #56

Hi, I worked on this project and have a couple comments to address the issues people are raising. - There are established medical protocols to treat COVID-19 patients with BiPAP machines, including the addition of a viral filter to mitigate aerosolizing the virus. People are using these protocols now and we link to them from the site. - There are two separate firmware hacks presented. The first one modifies ~20 bytes…

i don't know what you mean by "ST" programmer, but i'm a dev and i have an aircurve 10. do you need something?

[deleted]

Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#173

Post by [deleted] »

gmueckl wrote: post #127
mumblemumble wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being exceedingly uncharitable in characterizing the team that is working on this the way you do in the last paragraph. The article is littered with disclaimers about the current state of the project. They're very quick to point out that this is only a proof-of-concept, that expert review is ongoing and not complete, and that FDA approval needs to be sought before this can be used to treat COVID-19 patients. I…

No, I am not implying that this specific project is handled particularly unprofessionally. I want to warn people off who might think that they could just hack devices and put them to use on patients. This stuff requires serious expertise and if you don't have access to it, your effort is for entertainment only.

[deleted]

Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#174

Post by chipsa »

reaperducer wrote: post #147
DenisM wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn off the tank heater?

No option for that. I can adjust the humidity up and down, but the lowest setting still heats.

Mine can replace the reservoir with what's effectively a bypass plug. I assume this also disables the heater.

Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#175

Post by WWLink »

MrStonedOne wrote: post #129
electriclove wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a prescription required anyway?

In most medical devices anything, prescription is justified the same (read in a mocking voice) "There could be another reason for those symptoms so if we don't gate your access behind an expensive doctors visit you could treat the wrong thing and die" This is used to justify eyeglass prescriptions. This bullshit really needs to go, especially for eyeglass prescriptions. Making people wait weeks for another eye exam w…

cpaps are in a different ballpark than doctor visits! If you hunt around, you should be able to see a doctor for $100-ish. (Edit: of course, $100-ish is still a large amount of money)

(In some parts of CA, Heal will send a doctor to your house for a one-time fee of $159. And after my mom complained to said doctor about my snoring, their doctor ordered me a sleep study. So yes, that's one way to get it.)

That said, out here, most of the small independent offices that used to exist have been bought out by one of 3 medical groups. And with the large medical groups it's pretty hard to get a concrete number sometimes.

Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#176

Post by scrozier »

prostheticvamp wrote: post #109
ars wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. And the worst part is sleep studies are medically unnecessary - an APAP machine (automatic machine) can auto-set the necessary pressure, and no sleep study is needed. Simply sleep with an APAP for a week, review the pressure graph and draw a line at the bottom of the values. Then set the minimum pressure to that number, or slightly less and done. Review every few months. If you ask a Dr. about this…

Hahahahah. Oh man. The vast majority of patients take months or longer to get acclimated to the machine. Most will say they feel /worse/, because the machine gets in the way of their sleep at first. I look forward to hearing more medical pearls from the web design community.

Or how about from people who have actually used them? I put getting a study for years because the whole thing seems such a massive scam. Shame on me: I really needed a bipap, and now I feel so much better. But I could have figured this out by trying one for a week, as others have suggested. It blows air into my nose, for heaven’s sake. How many years of med school does it take to learn about that?

Also: wore it 8 hours the first night, and every night since. Not that hard to get used to.

Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#177

Post by pnathan »

IdoRA wrote: post #36

There is a reasonable chance that this will not be as useful as the team hopes: 1) They are increasing maximum pressure and pressure rate changes beyond the built-in design parameters. If these new parameters are outside what the engineering requirements document spec, these changes are a problem in seeking EUA. 2) In regulatory affairs, authorized , cleared , and approved have very specific (and enforceable) meaning…

This is possibly the most irresponsible project I've ever seen.

There appears to be a deep lack of regulatory experience, along with a deep lack of QC, and it's presented as a jailbreaking, i.e., what is done to your phone.

Some kinds of regulations are written in blood, or, in this case, bloody sputum.

Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#178

Post by arcticbull »

MrStonedOne wrote: post #129
electriclove wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a prescription required anyway?

In most medical devices anything, prescription is justified the same (read in a mocking voice) "There could be another reason for those symptoms so if we don't gate your access behind an expensive doctors visit you could treat the wrong thing and die" This is used to justify eyeglass prescriptions. This bullshit really needs to go, especially for eyeglass prescriptions. Making people wait weeks for another eye exam w…

> "There could be another reason for those symptoms so if we don't gate your access behind an expensive doctors visit you could treat the wrong thing and die"

Like all medical things they're (a) expensive (b) limited in supply (c) you don't have the knowledge, experience or impartiality to self-diagnose (d) you can't tell whether you need the device but buying it anyways removes limited supply from the market (e) you don't know how to calibrate it (f) you might hurt yourself.

Same reason it's insane Americans are allowed to self-refer to specialists: you don't know which specialist you need, you don't know whether you need a specialist at all, there's a limited quantity and you're likely just squandering a valuable resource.

In both cases letting unqualified end users have at it could just as easily increase the price not decrease it.

Glasses, though, no excuse.

Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#179

Post by quickthrower2 »

alepacheco wrote: post #89
stcredzero wrote: post #27

Here's what you should really know before you design a ventilator, by someone who works for a medical equipment company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vLPefHYWpY

Really good video right there!

The Indian design with the android phone looks very interesting - I hope that can be shared and mass produced, assuming it does a decent and safe job.

Re: Airbreak.dev: Jailbreak your CPAP machine to turn them into ventilators

#180

Post by stellar678 »

stcredzero wrote: post #27

Here's what you should really know before you design a ventilator, by someone who works for a medical equipment company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vLPefHYWpY

I think the whole point of hacking a CPAP is that it's already got the control and sensors that could allow a doctor to use it without injuring a patient. It's just a matter of exposing that via the software.
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