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What did we learn from the "open source ventilator" mess.......

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james_s:

--- Quote from: Smokey on July 07, 2020, 05:57:43 am ---I personally use open source whenever possible, and on the rare occasion have actually tweaked the code to fix/add something, so I get it.  I agree that the world pretty much runs on Linux under the hood.  The open source model works really well in some circumstances.  But I'm not naive enough to believe that everything needs to be open source, or that everything would be better if it was open source.  That's a level of ideology bordering on religious.  The bashing of Medtronic for not meeting the level of full open source purity when they released their design was pretty shocking to me.  As I said elsewhere, if the only thing they had done was release their full specification (which I think they did first), that would have been worthy of sainthood to any capable engineering group wanting to take on the task of making a production ready ventilator.  But instead they got shit on by the open source purists, which incidentally are a big part of the group of people who had delusions that they were capable of doing the job themselves in their garages.  It was pretty obvious no one was going to take the old Medtronic design and start spinning up production, so who cares if you don't have the full CAD models for the injection molds. 

And yes, the PPE and other things the Makers were doing was/is great.  Fully support that.  When I visited the hospital about 6 weeks ago a bunch of the nurses all had 3D printed mask holder bands to save their ears from the elastic, and they loved them.  I'm fully on board for using whatever skills you have to help, but being careful because overextending can be counter productive.

--- End quote ---


The Medtronic thing was obviously targeted at companies capable of producing devices of that nature already. If you are already manufacturing equipment and there is a dire enough need, having that design available greatly reduces the amount of reinventing the wheel that needs to be done. Also it was fascinating to be able to look at the design and see just how these things work.

The PPE is a great example of hospitals using equipment made by non-traditional suppliers, I remember people stating flat out that would never happen, that hospitals would never buy any sort of gear from random suppliers like that and yet they did. While I agree that some people are overconfident, pie in the sky types, I'm equally annoyed at the "it will never work, it's a stupid idea, don't even bother trying" crowd. That group will always sit around and accomplish nothing, while the group attempting the impossible will occasionally succeed. There's something that all very successful people have in common, they had the audacity to try and keep trying to pull off something. Look at SpaceX and Blue Origin for example, how would people 40 years ago react if you told them that in just a few decades private companies started by tech billionaires would be sending rockets into space? It's preposterous! That could never happen! Yet it has happened, and governments of superpowers are paying them for their services. A vastly larger number of people with big ideas have failed to get anywhere, but a few succeeded. 100% of those who decided not to try because it was futile failed.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: james_s on July 07, 2020, 05:24:04 pm ---While I agree that some people are overconfident, pie in the sky types, I'm equally annoyed at the "it will never work, it's a stupid idea, don't even bother trying" crowd.

--- End quote ---

That is a false dichotomy that you have invented.

I will tell people why their ideas won't work, and also be receptive to new possibilities. That's what I've been doing my whole professional career in R&D. I sometimes get it wrong, but I've learned to trust my inderstanding and intuition.

Berni:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on July 07, 2020, 06:19:08 pm ---That is a false dichotomy that you have invented.

I will tell people why their ideas won't work, and also be receptive to new possibilities. That's what I've been doing my whole professional career in R&D. I sometimes get it wrong, but I've learned to trust my inderstanding and intuition.

--- End quote ---

I think that was more meant at the stubborn kind of people that are fully and wholly convinced that the way they do something is the only correct way to do it. That kind of person who knows how to use a hammer and sees every problem as some variation of a nail. So when a very non nail-like problem pops up and the said hammer doesn't work the answer is "This is not possible to do". Yet it is perfectly possible if a screwdriver was used instead of a hammer, but too bad that he refuses to listen to any screwdriver related solutions because the hammer is clearly the superior tool because he has been using it for the last 25 years.

The issue is that it can be hard to tell the difference between this narrow minded hammer aficionado and an actual competent expert that is trying to tell you that this indeed will not work.

But yes people often don't like being told that there silly idea won't work, even if this is being explained by an actual expert that knows how badly the idea will indeed fail.

daqq:
Copying my response from a previous thread ( https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/sars-ncov-2covid-fueled-hype-enabled-ventilators/ ):

--- Quote ---This is mostly a classic media reporting issue.

The students/hobbyists etc. meant the ventilators mostly as a desperate last means, when the alternative would be for the doctors to hook up a patient to a vacuum cleaner they borrowed from the cleaning staff or let them die. Everyone knows it, the makers know it, the doctors know it. And only a few of the projects (there's actually a very good list of open source projects on this here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1inYw5H4RiL0AC_J9vPWzJxXCdlkMLPBRdPgEVKF8DZw/edit?usp=sharing , mind you, given the numbers it's incomplete and only the most serious projects are even mentioned) are actually really serious, most of them were just "huh, wonder how it works.".

The media reported this as "These brave local* lads created a device that is the same as a 10kUSD device that's being sold by the large corporations. All they needed was this balloon, a motor and a lot of duct tape."
It's really the fault of the way that the media prechew and dumb down the information. Instead of:
"This device, provided a lot more time and development is done, could be used, in the worst case scenario, to help in a very specific set of cases."
we got:
"This cheap fully working device can easily replace this 10kUSD machine! Rejoice, we are saved!"

* - this happened in many countries - here (Slovakia) as well, we had a report of at least 3 independent ideas.
--- End quote ---

Gyro:

--- Quote from: james_s on July 07, 2020, 05:10:48 pm ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on July 07, 2020, 06:18:35 am ---Doctors have this Hippocratic oath to contend with;  primum non nocere and all that.

Then they have to contend with lawyers who will convince the corpse's relatives that the doctor did something not sanctioned by the medical profession. However invalid, lawsuits are something doctors try to avoid.

--- End quote ---

Ok, well screw it then, let them die, it's safer than trying to help and helping wrong. I'd like to think that in a really dire situation people would react differently. Maybe it's a cultural thing? I've noticed most of the "OMG it HAS to be properly certified!!  :scared:" people are not in the USA, many of us here have more of a "think outside the box and just get it done" attitude, or used to anyway.

--- End quote ---

You're kidding right? You have the most litigious society in the world.  ::)

Mind you, buying up the world production of Remdesvir for the next few months is certainly a "just get it done attitude" (not to mention a 'screw them' one)!

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