The world's first Raspberry Pi powered ventilator is about to be tested

In the face of the rapid increase in the demand for ventilators in hospitals around the world, we have witnessed countless unique ideas to design and manufacture low-cost ventilators. solve urgent situations. Automakers like Tesla have taken advantage of car parts to build ventilators, while others like Maingear have the idea of ​​making ventilators from desktop cases. Recently, a team of engineers in Colombia has successfully built a ventilator from a Raspberry Pi computer and some other cheap components.

The man who came up with the idea was engineer Marco Mascorro, who also researched and developed this unique 'Raspberry Pi ventilator'. Because of his focus on making cheap medical devices, Mascorro mainly uses readily available components, which he can find at car parts or plumbing stores. The heart and the most special feature of this machine is a compact Raspberry Pi computer, which is responsible for controlling the air pressure, valves and respiration levels of the machine. In particular, the architecture and source code are all open source and were posted online last month.

The Raspberry Pi ventilator model is highly prized at manufacturing costs compared to traditional ventilators, however, in order to be licensed for mass production and human use, it will have to undergo rigorous testing at 2. where, the Hospital belongs to Pope Xavierian University and Los Andes University in Bogota, capital of Colombia.

'Such ideas are welcome and always encouraged, but they still need to be properly tested and evaluated before they are put to use,' said Dr. Albert Rizzo, Medical Director of the American Lung Association. States, comments.

The ventilator will be continuously tested for a period of 5 days with an artificial lung system as part of the testing phases. If you pass these tests, the device will be tested on animals. After that period, the Mascorro team hopes to begin testing of a human ventilator in May. If everything goes according to plan, the 'Raspberry Pi ventilator' will be mass produced and put to use in hospitals by mid 2020.