Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Ventilator made from car parts
max_torque:
--- Quote from: bd139 on April 07, 2020, 12:46:08 pm ---@Psi...
Not really. That line of thought only works until:
1. You inflate someone like a cane toad, followed by a loud pop and bits of lung everywhere by accident because the equipment wasn't qualified and tested properly.
2. You turn a viable outcome into a poor outcome or life long disability because someone gets a lung full of machine oil.
3. It fails after 3 hours and kills the patient silently.
4. You get an American lawyer anywhere in the process.
Rules and standards are there for a reason. There's no space for iteration in these things.
I've worked on "safety critical systems" albeit ones that are supposed to kill only the people you point them at (I regret this if I'm honest) and the standards there are as high as the medical side of things. There are whole teams of people who's jobs are to come up with what ifs.
--- End quote ---
At what point does a battle become a war, and other options become viable? :-DD That is what we are talking about here potentially? Unfortunately, as in most wars, the actual statistics, without which descisions had to be made anyway, will only become understandable when it's too late, after the war has finished. For example, overall, if a bodged together ventilator saves more people than otherwise woudl have died, then it's correct to use it, as it was an overal "greater good". only after the crisis has passed will that information become available and reliable :-//
Simon:
They need to seperate the project in two parts, the human interfacing bit and the electro mechanical bit. The human interface is the hard bit so try and ramp production of that part of it and then interface that to any mechanics that will do the job.
Psi:
--- Quote from: max_torque on April 07, 2020, 01:28:39 pm ---For example, overall, if a bodged together ventilator saves more people than otherwise would have died, then it's correct to use it, as it was an overal "greater good". only after the crisis has passed will that information become available and reliable :-//
--- End quote ---
+1 to this fact.
And Tesla knows this all too well.
Tesla autopilot will never be perfect and it will/has made wrong decisions that killed people but as long as it's saving more lives than it's killing then it's a good thing.
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: 2N3055 on April 07, 2020, 12:28:09 pm ---It's not legal problem. Those things are medical ventilators in same manner that bicycle tire pump is a medical ventilator.
Watch the video.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/ventilator-made-from-car-parts/msg3001626/#msg3001626
And then, probably, you will understand why a real MD will not connect anybody to such contraption.... It is not a real ventilator, it's a Rube Goldberg contraption made by people who don't understand real problem and is equivalent to elementary school science project.
--- End quote ---
Exactly.
(But yes it is a legal problem too. If some patient dies after being connected to one of those dodgy respirators, the family is very likely to sue. Wouldn't you?)
As I often say, just ask yourself if you'd be OK with some close relative being treated with this.
Now you may keep answering that it would be better than nothing. Which, first, is not necessarily the case as 2N3055 pointed out. But second, there comes the question of whoever gets treated with the real deal and whoever gets the "dodgy" stuff. (Inequalities are already there. Just look at the Boris Johnson case. He was directly put in ICU just in case, whereas the average joe who gets hospitalized in a similar state would just get isolated in a room full of other patients until their symptoms get so bad they need to be transfered to ICU. BJ was not in a life-critical state when he was transfered to ICU AFAIK. And I bet he would get a proper respirator if alternative ones were available. Just a side-thought...)
As to the point of these projects potentially saving more lives than they would kill, we have absolutely ZERO proof of that by nature as they wouldn't get a chance to be properly tested clinically as they should before being deployed.
Now as I said above, I'm all for companies HELPING medical device companies in any sane way they can, under proper supervision. That's a different story. But suddenly improvising, not so much.
Anyway, as many of us have said, there are so many ways people can currently help the world that just improvising medical devices doesn't make much sense IMHO.
This pandemic is putting the whole world on hold and is going to have lasting effects way beyond health problems.
bd139:
--- Quote from: max_torque on April 07, 2020, 01:28:39 pm ---At what point does a battle become a war, and other options become viable? :-DD That is what we are talking about here potentially? Unfortunately, as in most wars, the actual statistics, without which descisions had to be made anyway, will only become understandable when it's too late, after the war has finished. For example, overall, if a bodged together ventilator saves more people than otherwise woudl have died, then it's correct to use it, as it was an overal "greater good". only after the crisis has passed will that information become available and reliable :-//
--- End quote ---
This is not a war. We need to consider more than just the body count which is what the stats portray gleefully, but the patient's overall health outcome as well. If someone leaves that ventilator with extensive physical injury but alive that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to have a good quality of life outcome. Does being permanently disabled from heart and nervous system damage and requiring dialysis from kidney failure sound like fun?
That's my father-in-law for reference who is on ventilation with proper equipment for this at the moment who luckily probably isn't going to make it and I'm sure because I know him well, would not want to be chucked on a hacked up ventilator as a last resort so he can life the rest of his life in misery with no escape while someone fanfares over the body count improvement...
Edit: A point I'd like to add is we don't know what the health outcomes are going to be without thorough analysis and we don't even have enough data to rationalise that without introducing new variables into the recovery outcomes like equipment which is new and untrusted.
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