Let’s think about this logically, each hospital ICU has a preferred supplier of make and model of ventilator. The installation, training and support are less problematic if they keep to the current model used within the ICU. If the major manufacturers such as Siemens,Medtronic were to “Buddy†electronic manufacturers from other fields then in may be possible to share expertise and engineering manufacturing information quickly and effectively. If the hospitals were to provide an estimate of its ventilator needs to the manufacturer Then targeted effective production of ICU standard ventilators would hopefully follow.
Our role in this Crisis
There is however a major possible short fall in the support from the Biomed community to the ICU. Not as many engineers as we would wish are conversant with the physiology and ventilation principles as are going to be needed in the coming months. I feel it’s a bit like building cars without training the mechanical engineers in the highway code and the operation of clutch and breaks. We could end up with the blind leading the blind when these machines are installed. A major training program needs to be urgently implemented to enable engineers to understand ventilation principals. From this it would then be possible for manufacturers to train further on the service and repairs of these vents
Please forgive me if the texting grammar above are less than perfect, I’m currently awaiting repatriation from Florida back to the UK and this is all being undertaken on an old iPhone
Dave M
