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Medicine Open Source Hardware

Nvidia's Top Scientist Develops Open-source Ventilator That Can Be Built With $400 in Readily Available Parts (techcrunch.com) 48

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
New submitter jsicolo shares a report: Nvidia Chief Scientist Bill Dally has released an open-source ventilator hardware design he developed in order to address the shortage resulting from the global coronavirus pandemic. The mechanical ventilator design developed by Dally can be assembled quickly, using off-the-shelf parts with a total cost of around $400 -- making it an accessible and affordable alternative to traditional, dedicated ventilators, which can cost $20,000 or more. The design created by Dally strives for simplicity, and basically includes just two central components -- a solenoid valve and a microcontroller. The design is called the OP-Vent, and in this video you can see how bare-bones it is in terms of hardware compared to existing alternatives, including some of the other more complex emergency-use ventilator designs developed in response to COVID-19.
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Nvidia's Top Scientist Develops Open-source Ventilator That Can Be Built With $400 in Readily Available Parts More

Nvidia's Top Scientist Develops Open-source Ventilator That Can Be Built With $400 in Readily Available Parts

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  • And software costs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bungo ( 50628 ) on Friday May 01, 2020 @03:14PM (#60012028)

    And how much do you have to pay to have software that doesn't kill you?

    Surely that must be cheap, fast and easy.

    Let's ask the Boeing Max 8 development development team to help out.

    There are reasons why the machines cost more than a few hundred dollars. Other companies that tried to make cheap machines found this out.

    • Capitalist fearmongering. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Friday May 01, 2020 @03:54PM (#60012220)

      There's still oxygen monitors and nurses and the algorithms can be copied from other machines anyway. It's not rocket science.

      And in the face on suffocation, anyone would take even a machine that needs to be reset each time the alarm goes off over suffocating.

      But hey, reseachers say, the virus prevents the alveolar gas exchange, so ventilators are actually often useless, yet nobody seems to have gotten the memo, and people that are perfectly ventilated still often "inexplicably" die. So why are we discussing this?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Cyberax ( 705495 )

        But hey, reseachers say, the virus prevents the alveolar gas exchange, so ventilators are actually often useless, yet nobody seems to have gotten the memo, and people that are perfectly ventilated still often "inexplicably" die. So why are we discussing this?

        Apparently the mortality rate for patients on ventilators is anywhere from 30% to 90% depending on the overall healthcare situation: https://www.politifact.com/art... [politifact.com]

        It's not at all clear-cut. This totally makes sense, as elderly patients on ventilators are less likely to survive, compared to younger people.

        • I saw a report that the problem with COVID-19 isn't in the lungs but with the hemoglobin being destroyed. So the result looks a lot like High Altitude sickness and it would be better to treat it as such. The are other aspects that make it look a lot like Malaria which is why HQC may work.

          Meaning Ventilators are approaching 100% useless because the problem isn't breathing. The problem is that we don't have a centralized clearing house of in field treatments and why they may or may not be working. And when

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      That's why I like this ventilator design https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
      No software. Just pipes, switches, and 555 timers. And the design is based on official requirements.

      I am not expecting that contraption to be used on actual patients anytime soon, but still, I like the design.

      To be honest, it looks like the demand for ventilators is overestimated, with doctors saying that they are not as effective as they thought they would be (COVID-19 is not a regular pneumonia) and that other factors are more limit

  • The McMaster Carr ventilator. How much oil and particulates do those pneumatic valves release? Seems like cloning an old proven design would be better.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by uncqual ( 836337 )

      If the parts were bought from McMaster Carr, the BOM cost would probably be $800 instead of $400.

  • that blocked the US Government from stockpiling ventilators (they bought up the company that was going to make them and shut the program down) is going to regret this long term. There's dozens of designs out there now that are cheap to make, and they were selling the things for $10k/each (while the original stockpile program was going to buy them for $3k).

    It's no consolation to the folks who might have died waiting for a ventilator (especially if we stay on this "reopen in early May" pathway we're on ri

  • Not really a ventilator (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LatencyKills ( 1213908 ) on Friday May 01, 2020 @03:32PM (#60012136)
    Just from a glance, a solenoid valve and microcontroller, it doesn't look like it will measure tidal volume, just rate. Functionally, it's really more like an iron lung than a ventilator.
  • I expect to see new and refurbished ventilators on NewEgg and Amazon in coming years. I'm only half joking. With car companies, Dyson, Tesla, and many others jumping in to make ventilators, we may wind up with a surplus of hundreds of thousands of these things lying around, never used.
    • A lot of them could be donated to developing countries who are probably undersupplied even in a COVID-19-free world. I don't know if the information about the recommendations from Chicago doctors finding a better solution than using ventilators ever panned out or if it was just more chaff, but assuming it's true we might not event want to stockpile them for our own use in the event that this happens against in the next few years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by amorsen ( 7485 )

        Most of the new designs are useless for COVID-19. Modern ventilators have very precise control of pressure. Most of the new designs do not. COVID-19 makes lung tissue stiff and getting the pressure wrong means either not enough air and a dead patient or too much pressure and permanent lung damage.

        The countries you are thinking generally do not have the staffing required to run old-style manual control ventilators, and those with enough qualified staff (say, Cuba) have access to modern ventilators.

        The whole

  • I am not an expert on ventilators. My entire knowledge of them comes from watching one youtube video and skimming some service manuals. I still know just enough to recognize that this has a few bits missing. There's only one thing that looks like a pressure sensor, and it's connected before the valve, so your control of pressure and tidal volume is going to be only a very rough estimate - you can try to set it appropriately, but good luck with that. You can get away without temperature or humidity control i

    • The medical museum says they already rented out most of their relics to the senate.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • It also says that it supports alarm monitoring. I'm not sure how, because their nice transparent construction makes it easy to see what isn't present, and it's lacking the parts needed for that. Perhaps the version is the photo is an earlier prototype, and they added the extra sensor in a later revision.

    • You deal with pressure by having a relief valve, and with flow by having one monitor for an oxygen line feeding multiple proto-ventilators. I'm pretty sure none of these will have expiratory tidal volume monitors.

      But, that's what vents looked like Back In The Day: fixed rate, volume control only, no accommodation for spontaneous breaths, probably few if any flow meters. They were better than nothing. The irony is that vents don't really do much with COVID-19. It's a fruitful set of ideas for poor countries

    • Me neither. But, the article does state: "It includes sensors that accurately meter airflow, compensate for valve inaccuracy, control maximum pressure, enable patient-initiated breathing, and monitor for alarm conditions, among other features."

      • These sensors are missing from the photo that I was looking at. I can only assume the photo is of a different revision.

  • ... (including power plant workers, miners, mining equipment builders, builders, etc, etc)

    or $400 in profit and management bonuses?

    Human society shareholders demand to know.

    Cause if it's as usual, mostly the latter, then we can probably do it for $4.

    • You seem confused and didn't read the article which answers the question. The $400 is cost of parts off shelf. What's so hard to understand? Needs assembly and case which will be added cost. Negligible total compared to typical $25K to 50K one.

  • This is what I vote for, because the term "precisely metered" was too often used in that video - and that can mean anything and nothing.

    Perhaps this is not so deadly like injection oneself with disinfectant, but I would like to see these "demonstrators" when connected to a measurement dummy (yes those are existing).

    And then have them being judged, how they would actually perform and react in the way proven and certified designs do.

    And to have the "What-If" analysis done (Risk Assessment), what if for example the valve gets stuck in open position, can the system detect this and shut of, or will just go on fill it like a balloon. I think we need a Monty Python reenactment of a unit going haywire.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 01, 2020 @03:57PM (#60012236)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • The one shown in the photo doesn't, because you can see it's lacking the required sensor, but there are probably a few prototypes - they just took the photo of one that doesn't support patient-initiated breathing.

  • Without even needing a microcontroller.
    https://youtu.be/t324iJOYoXI [youtu.be]

  • Thousands of ventilators are sitting idle because there aren't that many cases in the vast majority of states, and even NY is falling off. Moreover, doctors are rethinking how to treat this disease as invasive ventilators are doing unnecessary damage to the patient. https://www.wogx.com/news/thou... [wogx.com]

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    No computer needed. Worked on them in my youth and they worked just fine.

  • I can make one too (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Friday May 01, 2020 @04:57PM (#60012486)

    Out of sprinkler valves an HVAC pressure switch, garden hose, duct tape and a stamp program executing rushed spaghetti code.

    What the hell are people doing? I at least respect companies like Ford who are partnering with commercial vendors to mass produce serious product. There is no shortage that warrants this type of cracked pottery.

  • 1) Lack of support from or for Apple,
    2) Linux support that's like pulling teeth,
    3) Whether it can mine cryptocurrency while ventilating,
    4) Crysis

  • The prognosis for ventilated patients is not so good ...

    A new study shows that most COVID-19 patients placed on ventilators died in NYC [webmd.com].

    And with other reports of blood clots and all sorts of nastiness, this virus is just a worst case scenario, until a real treatment or vaccine comes along ...

  • It attacks the lining of the blood vessels releasing the body's blood clotting agent. When enough blood clotting agent is released, your blood clots in your internal organs and you die. Nothing a ventilator can do about that :p That's the leading theory as of about last week.

  • Watch this video first, before you decide, an former ventilator engineer explains some of the difficulties in designing a safe ventilators.

    A Guide To Designing Low-Cost Ventilators for COVID-19 [youtube.com]

  • Cost of this machine: $400
    Cost of commercial units:$20,000
    What's the difference?
    Billions of dollars commercial companies had to pay to insurance
    companies to cover lawsuits in case it doesn't work all that well.
    Nvidia's machines could kill every third person, and it wouldn't be held responsible.

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