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

Tesla Ventilator

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 147 posts

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#41

Post by bArray »

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 this fails, the patient can die.

If these patients receive no help, they die anyway. Given the choice between almost certain death or some experimental piece of hardware - give me the experimental hardware.

> I can't imagine any hospital or doctor careless enough to

> connect one of these to a patient, even in this current

> emergency.

I'm sure they will go through accelerated testing.

> The smarter idea is to ramp up existing proven designs,

> not reinvent the wheel and basically do a publicity stunt

> about your engineering talent.

Retooling has an enormous cost too (time and money) - yes the design will be proven but you won't nearly have the tools or expertise to implement them.

I'm not a Tesla fan-boy by a far shot, but I don't think they deserve this hate for what is clearly a good effort on their behalf.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#42

Post by fifteenforty »

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,…

Without these sorts of things, patients are dying.

This is not business as usual. We are already using various hacks to overcome the shortages, any improvement is worthwhile in the very short term.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#43

Post by baybal2 »

kiba wrote: post #30
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,…

The whole point of this project is not to use up supplies needed to build ventilator but to compliment the ventilators they are already building by using Tesla parts. This is fundamentally a logistics project. Plus, they have access to Medtronic engineers, and as long as the FDA approve the devices, I have no problem with it.

> This is fundamentally a logistics project. Plus, they have access to Medtronic engineers, and as long as the FDA approve the devices, I have no problem with it.

Indeed, they just need to fly the devices, and parts for final assembly from the Medtronic factories in China.

In the current situation, it makes zero sense to spin new assembly lines when old ones are situated in the world's biggest manufacturing supercluster, and can be realistically scaled tenfold if they commit to that.

What I read going round Chinese BBSes now is that Medtronic's "factory" in Ireland is just doing a screwdriver assembly from Chinese parts, and all that just to do the infamous "Double Irish" manoeuvre

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#44

Post by Spare_account »

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 information we need is:

1. Percentage of patients who needed ventilation, got ventilation in good time, and recovered vs died.

2. Percentage of patients who needed ventilation, didn't get ventilation due to lack of resources, recovered vs died.

Then we'll know how much ventilators are helping.

I understand that prior to this pandemic, typical survival rates for patients who required invasive ventilation was in the region of 30%. 70% die even with ventilation.

I've also heard that of Covid-19 patients that require ventilation, 80% die even with ventilation. So it has a slightly lower survival rate than other illnesses.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#45

Post by [deleted] »

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,…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#46

Post by _ea1k »

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,…

At the beginning of this, Musk said that he didn't feel like new companies (including his) could get production going in meaningful quantities by the time that they would be required. I see nothing from Tesla that indicates that has changed, and I think that largely agrees with the point that you are making.

Your last point is important, I think. Notably, Tesla & SpaceX have been working with Medtronic to provide solenoids that are apparently a bottleneck in Medtronic's production process. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that others are also working on supplies for existing production lines to help with more rapidly ramping production. I think this is more likely to be useful.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#47

Post by Retric »

baybal2 wrote: post #43
kiba wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of this project is not to use up supplies needed to build ventilator but to compliment the ventilators they are already building by using Tesla parts. This is fundamentally a logistics project. Plus, they have access to Medtronic engineers, and as long as the FDA approve the devices, I have no problem with it.

> This is fundamentally a logistics project. Plus, they have access to Medtronic engineers, and as long as the FDA approve the devices, I have no problem with it. Indeed, they just need to fly the devices, and parts for final assembly from the Medtronic factories in China. In the current situation, it makes zero sense to spin new assembly lines when old ones are situated in the world's biggest manufacturing superclus…

China has banned exports of medical supplies.

Edit: Trusting them to supply medical components seems like a huge risk at this point.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#48

Post by baybal2 »

Retric wrote: post #47
baybal2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is fundamentally a logistics project. Plus, they have access to Medtronic engineers, and as long as the FDA approve the devices, I have no problem with it. Indeed, they just need to fly the devices, and parts for final assembly from the Medtronic factories in China. In the current situation, it makes zero sense to spin new assembly lines when old ones are situated in the world's biggest manufacturing superclus…

China has banned exports of medical supplies. Edit: Trusting them to supply medical components seems like a huge risk at this point.

Yes, as of April 1. I wrote about it below.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#49

Post by _ea1k »

LittleNemoInS wrote: post #28

This is not Tesla, but Seat has already done it : https://www.seat.com/company/news/company/from-making-cars-t... Less techie, more down to earth, they used wipe motors.

That's actually really impressive. I didn't realize any of these efforts were that far along. It will be interesting to see how long certification takes.

Re: Tesla Ventilator

#50

Post by heleninboodler »

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,…

> 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 works: he's purchased off the shelf BIPAP equipment and donated it (which turns out to not be as useful as hoped), he's got engineers homegrowing what appears to be a legit ventilator that may or may not get to volume production and/or certification in time, and he's helping established ventilator manufacturers with some of their manufacturing bottlenecks.

All three of these approaches are unlikely to be fruitful, but at a time when we're desperate and looking for quick innovation, it seems strange to dismiss people with the resources to try.

Post reply on HN