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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

#161

Post by ethbro »

Frost1x wrote: post #139
GordonS wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that help with this part: > Insurance won't pay for it unless the machine tells them I'm using it

You instead need to throw most the board of directors of the insurance provider and device manufacturer in question into a Faraday cage, lock it, and walk away. On a more serious note, this is a new world of crazy for me I wasn't aware of. I wonder how difficult it would be to push forged data back to the monitoring agency with physical access to the machine with an independent setup. Then, simply put your actual dev…

Might we want to consider that medical insurance fraud is in fact a serious concern?

From prior work in the industry, durable medical equipment is one of the most targeted areas for scams.

Relatively high cost, amortized over an extended utilization time.

I'm not particularly surprised that insurance companies (and therefore manufacturers that are supplying them) include such features. It'd be borderline negligent from a financial perspective not to.

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

#163

Post by fortran77 »

fragmede wrote: post #141
fortran77 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's scary is that CPAP machines are allowed on airplanes. If they really aerosolize virus particles, maybe they shouldn't be.

I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, but they let ordinary people with virus aerosolizing equipment (lungs + diaphragm) onto airplanes, currently.

There's a special, enhanced, risk with CPAP that authoritative medical sources warn about.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3338532/

I'm not sure I get your point. Did you have one?

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

#164

Post by mumblemumble »

sneak wrote: post #143
bearcobra wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube channel Real Engineering has a great video breaking down why that might not actually be true. The possibility that makeshift devices could cause barotrauma and make things worse seems quite significant. You can check it out here if your interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vLPefHYWpY

I just watched the video. I'm not sure what outcome is worse than "you need a ventilator, but we are out of all of the safe, high-quality ones, and so you will now suffocate and die". In that circumstance I am certain that very nearly 100% of patients would accept potential barotrauma versus the alternative.

If we're to keep it real, my understanding is that, if you have COVID-19 and need ventilation but can't get it, you're all but guaranteed to die. So, assuming a real ventilator is not available, then avoiding makeshift measures due to worries about barotrauma seems to me to be somewhat akin to saying that people shouldn't administer CPR because it's likely to break ribs.

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

#165

Post by dmead »

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?

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

#166

Post by VectorLock »

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.

Hospitals are already pressing CPAP machines into service in this way, this firmware hack is only making the devices more fitting for the role they're being asked to fulfill in exigent circumstances.

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

#167

Post by VectorLock »

huslage wrote: post #144

As a CPAP user who needs a new machine, I am now screwed by this. This will, by the time I have a new sleep study, cause all sorts of supply issues.

The pandemic is causing lots of supply issues. I don't think this firmware patch is even going to be a rounding error in the grand scheme of whats going on in the world right now. There are tons of CPAP machines this doesn't cover.

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

#168

Post by surge »

johnchristopher wrote: post #130
surge wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the radio is there as an added convenience so you don't have to keep a log and send it in for several months as evidence of usage. This is the fallback for those without radio, and its easy enough to put it in airplane mode. That said, Resmed provides a nice enough interface where you can track your sleep habits. To be fair it seems all they seem to track is how much you sleep each day, not when, where, etc. So…

That app isn't available everywhere though. I bought a secondary unit recently and I can't register it with the app (that I can't even download if I remember correctly). At least my other CPAP has an SD card.

The app was just a website. The whole thing was administered through my doctor/supplier when they programmed the thing. It is a bit locked down, but I think its because its a machine that's "prescribed".

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

#170

Post by souprock »

ck2 wrote: post #100

if you vent your home cpap machine into an open room and the person using it is infected, congrats you just vaporized the infection onto anyone nearby

Cool. Everybody in the home is already infected by the time somebody needs breathing assistance, so this is fine.
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