Traditional ventilators (ventilator) are very different from bag valve masks, resuscitators, PAP and CPAP, BiPAP machines.
This Nvidia design is not alternative to that $20,000 hospital ventilator. It's emergency-response ventilator alternative these other cheap designs you can already order from Amazon. You can't keep people long time in this kind of device without serious risk of damage to the lungs.
Not a lot.
Only 4 countries on record now managed to start mass production of designed from scratch emergency ventilators.
Expanding existing capacity would've been an incomparably better option.
Are your criticisms based on an understanding of how this specific device actually works? Sorry to be blunt, but by suggesting it is comparable to a bag valve mask, it sounds like you did not learn a lot about the device before making up your mind about it.
Noting wrong with being blunt. But please, be blunt only after you read whole sentences and trying to decipher the meaning. I listed several different classes of devices of varying complexity that are not equal to those $20,000 ventilators used in ICU.
I have experience in design of electronics that becomes part of ventilators and other medical equipment. GE healthcare and other firms.
>Are your criticisms based on an understanding of how this specific device actually works?
Yes. The system in question is very low-end emergency-response ventilator (explained in documentation). It's simplified design from those you see used in emergency response and patient transport. The operating mode seems to be basic pressure-controlled ventilation PCV.It can also measure tidal and minute volumes.
ICU ventilator is device is very different from everything else. It's connected to the patients trachea. You must sedate patients because it's super uncomfortable to use. Patients are put into those ventilators when they are really sick. Removing carbon dioxide is an issue. Long term use can damage lungs so the system monitors large number of variables and it has multiple operating modes.
For what it's worth, I did read your comment carefully. The reason I took exception (and reacted strongly, I fully admit) is that since the article addressed the bag thing, that makes it a red herring, so I would have expected you to filter it out of your list. Maybe that's overly rigid or overly literal of me, but that is why I reacted how I did.
This device definitely intends to be less than a full-featured ventilator. On the Pneumatics page (http://op-vent.stanford.edu/docs/pneumatics.html) it explains their goal is to produce kind of a stripped down "simple ventilator with the features needed to treat COVID-19".
So they believe it can be useful even though they know it lacks features. Whether they're right is certainly up for debate. They mention several optional features, which is interesting because maybe it means they're just trying to be flexible or maybe it means they don't really know what is the minimum necessary to have a net benefit (save more people than you kill) if we run out of full-featured ventilators.