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| Photo by Andreas Dress on |
The Real-Life Iron Man
When I read that tweet from Elon Musk I was shocked by it! As much as I respect Elon Musk, but I felt that he was stretching his abilities. Yes, the man is visionary and has disrupted the car industry forever.
At that time my thoughts were: "Man you gotta know your limits, we need ventilators a week ago! Please don't make me lose faith in you". As for someone working in the medical industry I know, it would take ages to build a ventilator from scratch then getting it FDA approved.
I really appreciated the reply on Elon's Musk tweet from the Mayor of New York City: "We need ventilators ASAP- we will need thousands". It felt to me like the mayor was saying walk the talk and deliver what you promised.
Surprisingly enough, Mr. Elon Musk was serious and is going to deliver! On another tweet, he announced that NY Giagafactory will start making ventilators and delivering them to New York hospitals.
Now the best decision made by Elon Musk was not only to step up to his promise. It was also by the decision to produce already market-level ventilators from leaders in ventilators production like Medtronic, Resmed & Philips. Making a ventilator from scratch was going to need time that New York hospitals don't have.
It was announced officially by Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak: "Telsa is making ventilators in partnership with Medtronic". He also added that the device that will be mass produce in the Puritan-Bennett 980. Medtronic has released a series of training videos for the PB980 model and we had written about that video series in a separate article.
What is more appreciative of the interview with CEO Omar Ishrak is that he stated: "We are gonna open-source on of our lower-end ventilators, in less acute situations, for others to make as quickly as they can". To me what CEO Omar Ishrak was more surprising than what Elon Musk tweeted!
There was another statement that got our attention from the governor of New York Andrew Cuomo where he stated that: "New York needs 30000 ventilators for critically ill coronavirus patients". Just for New York! How many ventilators the whole country is going to need?
That question was somewhat answered by Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak. As he mentioned that for any country to be able to meet the demand of ventilators, the ventilators need to be mobilized to where they are needed the most. He pointed that right now with the given circumstances this is the only option we got.
We are going to deviate a little from the main topic here. Open-sourcing a medical device was considered a taboo in the medical industry! There were requests from many African countries to many medical companies to open-source baby incubators, but to no avail. So maybe it is a good thing that now this taboo has been broken, and we hope that is will be broken for once and for all.
Medical companies have the right to protect their intellectual properties and we fully understand that. But open-sourcing a baby incubator after 15 years of introducing it to the market will save many lives. Just like open-sourcing a lower end ventilator will save lives.
We have a big question now. From where we can get the open-sourced ventilator designs? I know that not only the US market has a shortage of ventilators. India has a more severe shortage in ventilators and they already entered crisis mode in this regard. Can the Indian manufacturers lay hands on these open-sourced designs? Can poor African countries or other poor countries benefit?
Walk The Talk!
I really appreciated the reply on Elon's Musk tweet from the Mayor of New York City: "We need ventilators ASAP- we will need thousands". It felt to me like the mayor was saying walk the talk and deliver what you promised.
Surprisingly enough, Mr. Elon Musk was serious and is going to deliver! On another tweet, he announced that NY Giagafactory will start making ventilators and delivering them to New York hospitals.
Now the best decision made by Elon Musk was not only to step up to his promise. It was also by the decision to produce already market-level ventilators from leaders in ventilators production like Medtronic, Resmed & Philips. Making a ventilator from scratch was going to need time that New York hospitals don't have.
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| March 19th Elon Musk & Mayor Bill Tweets |
It was announced officially by Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak: "Telsa is making ventilators in partnership with Medtronic". He also added that the device that will be mass produce in the Puritan-Bennett 980. Medtronic has released a series of training videos for the PB980 model and we had written about that video series in a separate article.
What is more appreciative of the interview with CEO Omar Ishrak is that he stated: "We are gonna open-source on of our lower-end ventilators, in less acute situations, for others to make as quickly as they can". To me what CEO Omar Ishrak was more surprising than what Elon Musk tweeted!
There was another statement that got our attention from the governor of New York Andrew Cuomo where he stated that: "New York needs 30000 ventilators for critically ill coronavirus patients". Just for New York! How many ventilators the whole country is going to need?
That question was somewhat answered by Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak. As he mentioned that for any country to be able to meet the demand of ventilators, the ventilators need to be mobilized to where they are needed the most. He pointed that right now with the given circumstances this is the only option we got.
Elon Musk, as usual, was leading car companies in ventilator production also! Later we learned that Ford is going to partner with GE to start manufacturing ventilators. Also, General Motors is partnering with Ventec. We will be monitoring when will Ford and General Motors start delivering their finished ventilators to hospitals.
Elon Musk has converted Telsa solar production in Buffalo to ventilators. He also acted fast, so fast that it feels too good to be true. But acting fast in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak is going to be vital to save lives, reduce the virus spread and then to contain the threat.
Elon Musk has converted Telsa solar production in Buffalo to ventilators. He also acted fast, so fast that it feels too good to be true. But acting fast in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak is going to be vital to save lives, reduce the virus spread and then to contain the threat.
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| Elon Musk Tweeting Producing Medtronic Ventilators |
A Little Side Note
We are going to deviate a little from the main topic here. Open-sourcing a medical device was considered a taboo in the medical industry! There were requests from many African countries to many medical companies to open-source baby incubators, but to no avail. So maybe it is a good thing that now this taboo has been broken, and we hope that is will be broken for once and for all.
Medical companies have the right to protect their intellectual properties and we fully understand that. But open-sourcing a baby incubator after 15 years of introducing it to the market will save many lives. Just like open-sourcing a lower end ventilator will save lives.
Back to Medtronic Open-Source Ventilators
We have a big question now. From where we can get the open-sourced ventilator designs? I know that not only the US market has a shortage of ventilators. India has a more severe shortage in ventilators and they already entered crisis mode in this regard. Can the Indian manufacturers lay hands on these open-sourced designs? Can poor African countries or other poor countries benefit?
We will be monitoring this issue very closely. We want to know where are the Medtronic's open-sourced designs? Who will be making use of such designs? and a whole bunch of other questions. So please be posted and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
== Update ==
Medtronic has announced that they will be open-sourcing the PB 560 ventilators, to help fighting COVID-19 pandemic.
== Update ==
Medtronic has announced that they will be open-sourcing the PB 560 ventilators, to help fighting COVID-19 pandemic.
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