2. Project Inspiration

Project Inspiration

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from €20,000 (110%)
118 donations

A COVID-19 mechanical ventilator for everyone 

 

In short 

There is a high demand for easy-to-produce, durable ventilators in intensive care units across the world. This project aims to develop a mechanical ventilator that can be easily deployed and incorporates the basic functions necessary to ventilate COVID-19 patients. We not only aim to design the system, but we will also facilitate the implementation of local production and use to create the needed impact. 

Similar to the extensively used ventilator from the 60s that we based our design on, the East-Radcliffe ventilator, the working principle is purely mechanical. It has been designed in close collaboration with intensivists and military doctors to meet specific requirements and high standards, while it also can be fabricated with standard machinery in low-tech environments. It does not depend on specialized medical components that are part of standard ventilators. Such components are currently very scarce on the world market.

Right now we need your support to finance certification and ensure impactful implementation. 

Who are we? 

We are a team of academic staff, students and technical support staff at the Delft University of Technology, led by Dr. Gerwin Smit. Our non-profit team is building a mechanical ventilator to help to fulfill the high demand anywhere in the world. 

Goal 

The goal of our project is to reduce the lethality of COVID-19 around the world. Core features of our project are: 

  • Our system is designed to be easily manufactured anywhere with widely available components and production processes.
  • Our project is not only nationally, but also internationally aimed. We are currently working with Guatemala and other low-income countries to discuss and guide local implementation.
  • The robustness of the purely mechanical working principle gives the device an intended maintenance interval of more than 2 weeks.
  • The ventilator is simple to operate by untrained personnel, for example in emergency field hospitals.

 

Why do we need your support? 

The raised money will be used to make the current design of the ventilator market-ready. This incorporates developing additional functionalities of the ventilator, such as weaning and free-breathing trials, and conducting tests for certification. Applying for certification is crucial to be able to proceed in this project. 

Furthermore, to provide interested low-income countries with an example ventilator to examine the design and start production in their own facilities. These partners will adjust the design to match with the available parts and production facilities in that specific country. This means that the compatibility of these components needs to be tested for each configuration that will be used. The crowdfunding support will also create budget for the production and transport of these parts to the interested countries and for testing of the configurations. 

 

For more information and details please contact us or visit our website: 

https://www.projectinspiration.nl/ 

contact@projectinspiration.nl 

 

€25 Donate Receive a personal photo - Receive a photo of our ventilator 33 donors €50 Donate Receive a newsletter - Receive a newsletter and all previous rewards 10 donors €100 Donate Behind-the-screen photos - Receive behind-the-screen photos of the project 17 donors €500 Donate Receive a video - Receive a video of the working prototype and all previous rewards 1 donor €1,000 Donate Contributor mention - Your name will be mentioned on the contributor list of the website and you receive the previous rewards €1,000 Donate Partner - Aimed at companies: Get your name on the partner list of our website and receive the previous rewards 1 donor
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We achieved our goal!

 16-06-2020 | 10:14 Dear Backers, Thanks to your generosity we were able to achieve our goal: to raise €20.000,- for project inspiration! Initially project inspiration intended to provide ventilators to Dutch patients when our IC system would become overloaded with COVID-19 cases. Luckily this did not happen! As we saw the domestic demand decline, we looked for other countries that might be interested in our ventilator design. Several countries responded very positively and currently teams in multiple countries are working to produce and implement our ventilator locally. Your donations enabled us to design a working ventilator that can be produced with limited resources and standard workshop equipment. This is a potential game changer for poor countries with limited resources, and can hopefully save lives. In order to provide the ventilator to as much people as possible we have partnered with a production company in the Netherlands that will produce a batch of our ventilators. These machines will then be shipped abroad to countries with interest, so the machine can be certified locally. Although the situation in the Netherlands has improved, it has become clear that this is definitely not the case in all areas of the world. We get daily messages from people in other areas describing how dire the situation is with collapsing health systems and declining economies. Hopefully our ventilator will be able to make a positive contribution in those area’s in the near future. The current efforts of the team are to conduct further tests of the ventilator to ensure safe operation, and to raise awareness of the project in as much countries as possible. Thank you so much for being a part of our crowdfunding campaign, we could not have done it without you!   Best, Project Inspiration Team.
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