hi guys I'm Olivia with iFixit and even
though as you can see we're still in
lockdown I wanted to let you know about
some cool things we've been working on
for the last four weeks we've been
crowdsourcing thousands of repair
documents for hundreds of different
ventilator models these machines are
critical in the fight against Cova 19:00
as they help patients breathe
mechanically when they're too weak to do
so themselves we've been seeing stories
on the news about the ventilator
shortages all over the country and to
make matters worse these machines are
running almost non-stop and they're
breaking or as we saw in California
they're arriving already broken
biomedical technicians
usually known as BioMed's are the repair
experts in hospitals and they need to
spend every minute they have fixing
these machines not searching the
internet for repair manuals that's where
we come in I fix it it's the online
repair manual for everything and we're
hoping to make it essential repair
resource for BioMed's all over the world
the closest thing to an existing central
resource is Frank's hospital workshop a
fantastic website run out of Tanzania
with hundreds of manuals and very
helpful how-to resources for maintaining
medical equipment but Frank's site is a
one-person operation and a single point
of failure should overwhelming traffic
come calling right now we're working on
organizing the thousands of repair
manuals we've received it's a huge
undertaking as of this week we have over
500 manuals for ventilators made by 58
different companies and more than nine
hundred anesthesia systems service
manuals online so far these integrated
anesthesia machines are being used as
backup ventilators and we're working on
adding other high-priority equipment to
this list we've also got teams of
engineering students from our local
University Cal Poly working with our edu
team to turn these repair manuals into
step-by-step repair guides and more
volunteers are ready to translate those
guides into other languages this will
allow anyone biomedical engineer or
medical professional to get the machines
fixed and back to saving lives yesterday
five states released a statement
demanding manufacturers release all
service manuals service keys and
schematics during this crisis enabling
hospitals to make repairs to ventilators
and maximize their supply and ability to
serve more Kovan 19 patients we've been
thrilled that the response we've seen
from the community on this project and
we're grateful to everyone who has
volunteered time submitted manuals and
told your local buy-in that's about it
our goal is to make this a robust
accessible resource to help medical
professionals stabilize
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