General > General Technical Chat
What did we learn from the "open source ventilator" mess.......
Smokey:
--- Quote from: GlennSprigg on July 06, 2020, 01:04:08 pm ---I really DO understand what you are saying, mate. However, in times like these, we DO have to Bypass the
myriad of normal 'regulations' that authorities/nations would/should 'normally' impinge, on generic products
appearing on the market generally. It would be quite evident, very early on, which ones are a waste of time,
but there may be many others that may help, and make a difference, where immediate global production is
limited for many reasons. If it 'works', then just do/try it!! I wouldn't want the life of say my Father or Grand-
Father to rely on some Fabrication/Legal/Govt clause 117.3.b etc to block someone's production, if it HELPS!! :phew:
--- End quote ---
I fully support the people who are out there working their asses off to make the things that people need right now. That includes all the professionals and engineering companies and groups working on ventilators. Those aren't the people I have issues with though.
The family of the dude who's lungs you pop with your "device" won't care about how many other lives you may have saved.
DrG:
--- Quote from: Smokey on July 06, 2020, 12:19:31 pm ---Now that the dust has settled and it's not apparently trending anymore...
If you got caught up in the open source ventilator rush and spent any amount of time thinking about that problem seriously, try out these questions. It's never a total waste of time if you learned something.
1) Raise your hand if... You learned something about being way overconfident in your own functional skills.
2) Raise your hand if... You learned being a "maker" isn't the same as being an engineer.
3) Raise your hand if... You learned that the design of a life critical medical device is more complicated than you thought and deserves more respect than you thought.
4) Raise your hand if... You learned that knowing something about electronics or software does not imply you can design mechanical systems.
5) Raise your hand if... You learned that even if you have a functional design, that does not mean you can successfully manufacture a product.
6) Raise your hand if... You learned that always having 100% "open source" ideological purity isn't really that important and harping on it isn't always helpful.
7) Raise your hand if... After learning how silly the basic idea of open source community designed ventilators are, you volunteered delivering food to old folks in your community or some other useful activity.
It's one thing to have an engineering mindset and be curious about how things work and want to go through the exercise of learning how to do things for it's own sake. In that case, fine. Build yourself a ventilator in your garage. It's another thing entirely to take on the stance that you and your friends on the internet are seriously intending to do what the big companies can't and save the world by becoming functional in the cumulative understanding of a whole handful of distinct engineering careers in a matter of weeks in order to create a reliable life critical medical device for mass production and anyone who thinks that's crazy just needs to shut up and get out of your way. As it turns out, what we should have all been working on was "open source toilet paper". We would have been rich!
--- End quote ---
Can't say you have not made some good points, because I think you have.
I just want to offer, what I think is a successful example, of a successful open source ventilator project...
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7661
https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/stories/blog/36790
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/eight-us-manufacturers-selected-to-make-nasa-covid-19-ventilator
No, it was most-definitely NOT made in a single person's garage. It is a story that, I think, complements the issues that you raised.
It is open source (at least insofar as I think of open source).
The design engineers, who were not in the ventilator business, learned what it was supposed to do by asking the medical profession what it was supposed to do and working with them.
The "team" included engineers from many different areas ( e.g., https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/rapid-prototyping-hack-chat/#more-415947).
The team implemented rapid prototyping that exemplifies to me, what 'rapid prototyping" means (again, my opinion). " It was designed, prototyped, and tested on an incredibly ambitious timetable: 37 days total." - that is the usual quote...not going to stick my neck out on that one, but the point is, when an eclectic approach is used (one that involves expertise in many different areas), the chance of success is increased.
The team understood and worked with regulatory folks (see FDA faciltation).
It is an impressive story and one that does not refute what you are saying, it elaborates upon what you are saying.
It does not nullify the role of the individual, it realizes the role of the individual.
Smokey:
--- Quote from: DrG on July 06, 2020, 02:19:44 pm ---Can't say you have not made some good points, because I think you have.
I just want to offer, what I think is a successful example, of a successful open source ventilator project...
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7661
https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/stories/blog/36790
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/eight-us-manufacturers-selected-to-make-nasa-covid-19-ventilator
No, it was most-definitely NOT made in a single person's garage. It is a story that, I think, complements the issues that you raised.
It is open source (at least insofar as I think of open source).
The design engineers, who were not in the ventilator business, learned what it was supposed to do by asking the medical profession what it was supposed to do and working with them.
The "team" included engineers from many different areas ( e.g., https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/rapid-prototyping-hack-chat/#more-415947).
The team implemented rapid prototyping that exemplifies to me, what 'rapid prototyping" means (again, my opinion). " It was designed, prototyped, and tested on an incredibly ambitious timetable: 37 days total." - that is the usual quote...not going to stick my neck out on that one, but the point is, when an eclectic approach is used (one that involves expertise in many different areas), the chance of success is increased.
The team understood and worked with regulatory folks (see FDA faciltation).
It is an impressive story and one that does not refute what you are saying, it elaborates upon what you are saying.
It does not nullify the role of the individual, it realizes the role of the individual.
--- End quote ---
Yes! What the JPL team did was pretty cool. There is always a place for the skunkworks mentality, where you get the best people together and just get out of their way. And I fully recognize and appreciate the individual contributions of the engineers. When it comes down to it, it's all about the individual engineers. Good managers really only exist to remove roadblocks for the engineers.
I think it's really telling that the team that succeeded came from JPL. We are already talking about some of the best of the best. If you needed more qualifications, that organization made the mars rovers which had a spec for a minimum 90 days of operation but continued working for 15 years!!!!! I can guarantee these guys weren't soliciting help from the hackaday community for design reviews. They weren't monitoring the community spreadsheet which kept an opensource purity score for all the worldwide hacker projects. They weren't putting up fiverr listing for Arduino code. They just got to work. When they needed help they pulled in the experts they knew already had the skills they needed. They didn't ask some super excited dude on the internet to catch up on years of technical understand and experience and wait for him to maybe contribute.
The JPL team (and I'm sure some other teams like them) are exactly what the world needed. The experts were on it. Everything else was just noise. All of the media attention of high school kids and their garage projects was just a distraction. You want an experienced pilot flying the plane, not a student on the first day or some dude who played a flight simulator once.
It's an important skill to be able to take a step back and say to yourself, "Self, This is actually important and I'm not qualified to be here right now".
james_s:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on July 06, 2020, 01:09:59 pm ---
--- Quote from: Psi on July 06, 2020, 12:51:39 pm ---I learnt that some people would rather die than be put on a ventilator which is not fully medically tested and certified. It kinda surprised me.
--- End quote ---
Don't be a twat. If they needed a ventilator, they were in no position to be able to give informed consent.
Having built a lung ventilator, over half a lifetime ago, I know there are a lot of subtle ways that it can kill, even if it works correctly and according to specification.
--- End quote ---
Here we go again.
So it's better to let someone die because they haven't given consent to try something that may be risky in order to save their life? Yes, I'm absolutely surprised that people actually think the way you seem to, floored actually. I seriously hope that if I'm going to die and unable to express my wishes that I have a doctor who is willing to be creative and try something novel to save me. If it works, great, if I die, well I was probably going to die anyway, at least they tried. I cannot even fathom why someone would think it better to simply let me (or anyone) die because the lifesaving device/procedure had risk. I'm seriously completely baffled by the attitude : :-//
But what did happen with all this ventilator stuff anyway? My perception is that they managed to scrape up enough machines to get by,t combined with aggressive social distancing reduced the numbers to where we didn't need to take more drastic measures.
james_s:
--- Quote from: Smokey on July 06, 2020, 01:29:05 pm ---The family of the dude who's lungs you pop with your "device" won't care about how many other lives you may have saved.
--- End quote ---
Perhaps that is a reflection of just how incredibly self centered many people are. They don't care about lives saved, they only care about the life of their person.
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