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There already exists a low cost ventilator that was designed for the India market.

https://www.agvahealthcare.com/

but good luck getting fda approval.

This looks like an awesome product. Buy the rights and open the source code so we can have hundreds of eyeballs on it. I am sure lots of improvements can be built around it including better regression testing, monitoring, finding existing bugs, etc.

If the choice is no FDA approved ventilator vs one that is not approved I think the second option is the better one. Emergencies will change the landscape rapidly to the point where such luxuries as FDA approval will no longer matter as much as they did before.

FDA has emergency approval process and it'll be used when shit hits the vent.

In fact it was just used like two days ago.

The ventilator most likely is not approved for political/cronyism reasons, rather than safe functionality

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