The Covid-19 novel coronavirus epidemic has taken the world by storm. From humble beginnings in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, it has gone on to infect more than a million people with a case fatality rate of more than 5%. Complications may include pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). There is no known vaccine or specific antiviral drug treatment. It is estimated that 30% of Covid 19 hospitalized patients are likely to require mechanical ventilation [1]. However, there is a huge gap which appears to be widening every day between supply and demand of ventilators, so much so that doctors are forced to make life and death decisions due to shortage thereof [2]. The price of ventilators has jumped by 150% due to unbridled free market mechanics [3]. This has driven engineers across to world to find cheap, affordable and quick solutions to expensive branded ventilators where traditional manufacturers are struggling to meet demand. Many, but not all, of these efforts are open sourced by the inventors, meaning that they can be manufactured and improved upon without the fuss and commercial greed associated with patents and licenses in this hour of need for humanity.
With the advent of this pandemic in Pakistan, a small group of engineers started preparing the technological response of this nation with limited resources on volunteer basis. What started off as disparate and isolated efforts soon gathered steam and snowballed into Pakistan Against Corona-Volunteers (PAC-V), a coalition of volunteers searching for engineering solutions in the fight against corona virus. The central ethos is as follows:
The (PAC-V) headed by Dr. Bilal Siddiqui, former chief engineer at PAC Kamra compiled a team specifically to work towards developing mechanical ventilators in Islamabad. A parallel effort was also started by Muhammad Umair Arif from Bahria University and Dr. Abid Kareem from Usman Institute of technology in Karachi in developing “Low cost ventilators”. The two groups rapidly grew with more than a 500 people from various background and eventually merged their efforts into a single initiative called OpenVentPk.
In the span of a few days, starting on 15th of March 2020, literally hundreds of engineers, medics, programmers and manufacturers combined forces in the open-source spirit to serve the suffering humanity. The authors claim neither credit nor ownership and freely transfer all rights to replicate, improve, make and provide to the world. We are compatriots of humanity and believe in the fundamental right to life and happiness without recourse to profiteering.
OpenVentPk is archived at GitLab and GitHub. When we started, we were perhaps the only team working on ventilators in the country. In a meeting called by the engineering council (PEC) on the 24th of March, there were six teams (including two existing products patented in the USPTO). In another week, the initiative we took had mushroomed to 50 teams nationwide. While we wholeheartedly welcome this outpouring of engineering vigor, we are happy to be precursors of this rapid development, and readily incorporate all open-source projects on ventilators in the country that have joined forces with us.
OpenVentPk is the only open source ventilator project in Pakistan which has a serious team of engineers, medical practitioners, 3D printing companies. Large scale manufacturing teams are also onboard for industrial scaling later.
We have a very committed team of professional and extremely competent people from all over the country and beyond to serve for this cause. During this lockdown situation, this team has been solving problems as they come in a very coordinated manner for the fulfillment of the objective.
The Overall team is lead by Muhammad Umair, Asst. Prof at Bahria University, a PhD scholar at NUST and co-founder of The Disrupt Labs. The R&D is being coordinated and facilitated by Dr. Bilal Siddiqui, former chief engineer at Pakistan Aeronautical Complex Kamra, The 3-D printing team is being lead by Mr. Tayyab from Xplorer 3D with Abdullah, Farrukh and shaheer. Another team lead by Mr. Rabi from Grit3D with Azeem and Asad. The mechanical assembly of compression mechanism is being lead by Mr. Jamal from Aceforge. The mathematical modeling team is lead by Sarim from University of waterloo along with Noman. The Embedded software team is being lead by Mr. Sohaib Ashraf along with Dr. Sharif, Sir Wajid and Usman. The embedded hardware team is being lead by Mr. Hamza Azeem from Signaxes and the team includes Hashir Azeem, Aitezaz, Kamran, Munum and Faraz. The problem of finding sensors was being handled by Zeeshan Abbasi from mparsec and Asher. The Mechanical calibrations team is being lead by Mr. Hassan from PPL, Ghufran from Shell Pakistan, Farooq from Pakistan Oxygen company and Shahjahan. The UI team is being lead by Danish, former R&D Manager at Wavetech along with Anas and Data science expert abdul Wahid. Technical advice and input being given by Azeem Anwar and Dr. Abid Kareem. The Medical Input team is being lead by Dr. Ali Shoaib from Liaqat National Hospital, Dr. Mehreen and Dr. Akbar from Agha Khan Hospital. The local testing and compliance is being lead by Nadeem From Fast University along with Ateeq & Rafique. The detailed documentation is being done by Shamoon and Atif. The procurement was facilitated by Danish from Suparco. The industrial onboarding and mass scaling process is being lead by Osama Ehtisham. The current prototype is being built at The Disrupt Labs in Karachi funded by Saima Rizvi. The logo was facilitated by Mudassir from Jafrix, the domain & hosting was purchased by Yasir and website is being built by Adeel from Bizintel, Arsalan and Fahad from Pluton. Hira Wajahat from Stimulus is looking at international communications. There are more and more people joining in and the complete list is on www.openventpk.com
OpenVentPk team plans to develop the minimally clinically acceptable ventilator to be used in hospitals to confer therapeutic benefit on a patient suffering with ARDS, used in the initial care of patients requiring urgent ventilation. It is proposed these ventilators would be for short-term stabilization for a few hours, but this may be extended up to 1-day use for a patient in extremis as the bare minimum function. Ideally it would also be able to function as a broader function ventilator which could support a patient through a number of days, when more advanced ventilator support becomes necessary.
Pakistan Engineering Council has identified the bare minimum requirements to be according to the requirements set by Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) of the UK government. The guidelines published on 20th March, 2020 are entitled as “Rapidly manufactured ventilation system specifications” [4]. Our core focus is to meet the “Mandatory requirements” set by these guidelines within 4 weeks starting from 23rd March, 2020 onwards.
We have got many resources onboard with us now. Initially we did have some issues but now there are enough people onboard. However, you can look at the progress and see where your skills are likely to be useful. For-example, if you have connections with PEC or DRAP or other regulatory authorities or if you have people who are interested in mass manufacturing.
Secondly, we have enough funds to cater for the requirements by several volunteers at the moment, but once our prototype crosses the approvals phase, we would be needing a lot of support in terms of manufacturing ability to make sure we are able to realize this dream. And that means a lot of funds to actually build a large number of these. If you think you cannot contribute in anyway, we would love that you sincerely pray for our team that May Allah reward them for their efforts. That would be one of the best gifts we can ask for.
You can contact the team:
Muhammad Umair Airf
Team Lead
+92-336-8515895
umair.arif.m@gmail.com
Dr. Bilal Siddiqui
+92-335-3461598
pacvresponse@gmail.com
References:
1. Ferguson N, Laydon D, Nedjati-Gilani G, et al. “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand United Kingdom2020” [Available from:https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gidafellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf (Accessed on 05 April 2020).
2. “I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This”: Doctors Without Enough Ventilators Are Being Told Whom To Save During The Coronavirus Pandemic'”, Buzzfeed, Apr 4, 2020 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kadiagoba/ventilator-shortage-new-york-hospitals-coronavirus
3. “Cuomo says ventilators cost $50,000—up from $20,000—as states compete for the devices”, Forbes, 30 Mar 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/03/30/cuomo-says-ventilators-cost-50000-up-from-20000-as-states-compete-for-the-devices/#143c42c378b3
4. Rapidly manufactured ventilator system specification. (2020, March 20). Retrieved March 24, 2020, from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-ventilator-supply-specification/rapidly-manufactured-ventilator-system-specification
5. Abdul Mohsen Al Husseini et al. “Design and Prototyping of a Low-cost Portable Mechanical Ventilator”, Proceedings of the 2010 Design of Medical Devices Conference DMD2010 April 13-15, 2010, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
