Maker Response to COVID-19 Pandemic

“Plan C”

Watching the world being consumed by a global pandemic can be overwhelming. Many of us who self-identify as makers have the reflexive reaction to do something to help fix the problem. On hearing that hospitals and other health providers are running out of respirators, face shields, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) makers around the world started working to design and build alternate solutions to the problem. The result has been a virtual global hackathon.

Dale Dougherty, publisher of Make Magazine coined the phrase "Plan C" to describe this phenomenon. In his Make Magazine article

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3D Printed Valves for Hospital Respirator

As the Covid-19 pandemic was ramping up in Italy, a hospital in the hard-hit Brescia area of northern Italy was facing a distressing situation: While they had the equipment needed to provide the oxygen stricken patients need to breath, they had run out of venturi valves (as these need to be changed for each new patient). Even worse, the device manufacturer was unable to provide replacement valves. In desperation, the hospital turned to a local engineering firm who reverse engineered a replacement and created the needed valves using a 3D printer.

Italian Engineer Makers use 3D Printers to Create Valves for Ventilator.

Folding@Home Simulation

Distributed Supercomputing attacks Corona Virus

How can you help?

If you'd like help, how do you figure out what to do?

One suggestion is to check with Nation of Makers (NoM), a US organization that helps maker spaces start up, grow, and succeed. NoM maintains a Google doc that lists maker projects and organizations working on COVID-19 projects. From that larger list, a few are higghlighted below:

Currently NoM has designs for face shields, handmade masks, safety goggles, and a validated gown design. They are currently working with their partners to create validated designs for booties, head coverings, and other critical PPE.

NoM is partnering with several other groups to help bring maker-designed personal protective equipment (PPE) designs from concept to reality. The overall process is: Engineers, makers and designers design a prototype (independently, or through NoM partner groups ), then send it to a panel of medical reviewers (medical professionals who have volunteered to validate the designs) for validation.

Once a design has been validated, it is submitted to their partner group GetUsPPE for publication on the website www.getusppe.org/makers where makers can download designs and start contributing their time and expertise.

The first group, GetUsPPE provides a forum to connect medical professionals needing PPE with makers creating PPE designed by others. If you have a 3D printer, sewing machine, laser cutter, or other maker tools at home, GetUsPPE.org is a great place to look for things you can create to help.

In partnership with GetUsPPE, NoM is working with the Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies (OSCMS) Group, a volunteer group of medical professionals, engineers, scientists, designers, professional fabricators, and makers that are working to evaluate, design, validate, and source the fabrication of open source emergency medical supplies around the world. OSCM provides a forum for makers to get feedback on their designs and for medical professionals to ask for what they need.

The final group is Helpful Engineering (https://www.helpfulengineering.org/), an open community of volunteers designing, sourcing and executing projects to help people suffering from the COVID-19 crisis worldwide.