This project was initiated by the COVID-19 global pandemic as a result of a community discussion within a Facebook group called Open Source COVID-19 Medical Supplies (OSCMS). This group rapidly grew and currently is targeting the development of a number of different COVID-19 related medical supplies.

OSV Ireland was formed by Colin Keogh, Conall Laverty & David Pollard, with the goal of building a focused team in Ireland to begin development of a Field Emergency Ventilator (FEV)

To date we have grown to a large team of engineers, designers and medical practitioners to develop new, low resource interventions, all working collaboratively online.

We have a core developer team publishing open source designs with ongoing communication with medical professionals regarding needs requirements, testing and validation processes. The developer team is led by OpenLung in Canada (www.openlung.org) in collaboration with an Irish based engineering and operations team. The developer team is led by Trevor Smale, Dr. Andrew Finkle, and David O’Reilly from OpenLung as well as Conall Laverty and Dr. Keith Kennedy from Ireland. Work is well underway with hundreds of worldwide contributors from over 50 nations worldwide.

Our mission is to develop a Field Emergency Ventilator (FEV) system to be used in an emergency situation, where a large number of basic ventilator systems are required. We are working closely with a core design team of 20+ area experts, external organisations and other open source groups to develop a number of viable concepts for testing.
The overall goal is to develop & design a simplified, low-cost and open-source emergency-use ventilator, producible at scale to aid the treatment of COVID19 patients.
This open source design project is consolidating findings from experts globally to accelerate the development of working prototypes. Working closely with OpenLung Canada, and their designers, a number of concepts are being finalised for prototyping and testing. The project fully embraces the Open Source ideal, with all files made available online as the project progresses.
This low-resource Field Emergency Ventilator (FEV) is intended to be a simple, reliable, safe and easy to use device that consists mostly of 3D printed parts and uses a Bag Valve Mask (BVM). This is an emergency field solution that can be relatively easily mass produced with certified components and rapidly deployed by general care workers on the front-line fight against COVID-19. We have been working in close consultation with frontline healthcare workers and other related bodies to ensure the development of a viable solution.
.

We will also include other challenges and problems as they arise from frontline healthcare workers, which we will encourage our volunteers to form groups and tackle. We are quickly trying to set up structures and systems to fast track the development of these solutions, organize volunteers and structure a response.

This project is Open source in nature, with solutions developed for use worldwide and open from contributions from others.
· Open source in nature so iterative and open for community involvement
· Development of a Field Emergency Ventilator (FEV) to support medical practitioners
· The use of basic components, safe design is preferable to no intervention at all
· Supplies and materials will be locally sourced where available
· The design(s) will be validated; validation will be documented and transparency will be made available to local health services
· Dissemination via Internet (www.opensourceventilator.ie) and GitLab (https://gitlab.com/TrevorSmale/OSV-OpenLung)

Regulatory bodies may waive clearance or reduce regulatory barriers for emergency interventions.
Traditional certified medical components and supplies used in ventilators will be in short supply.
Logistics will be impaired/disrupted. Non-medical supplies, manufacturing systems and components will be readily available globally.
The content of Open Source Ventilator's website is for information only, not advice or guarantee of outcome.This ventilator may not be suitable for all applications and must be used under medical advice & guidance.