The first open-source ventilator tested on human patients
Much respect to these people for continuing the project even after it became clear that ventilators aren't uniquely useful for treating covid.If they can get the relevant certifications and work out how to handle reliable servicing, it could be a significant boon to the medical community, especially in areas where cost is an issue.Better yet, it could show people that it is possible to develop critical medical devices without relying on a heavy veil of secrecy and NDAs, and give a much-needed leg up to projects developing devices like ultrasound imagers or EKGs/EEGs/etc.Here's hoping they can clear the regulatory hurdles without much difficulty and let people buy them without MIT-style license disclaimers, but it looks like those problems will likely fall on local manufacturers.Which raises an interesting question: is it smart to be the first company to start mass-producing an open-source medical device? You would need to foot the heavy certification bill as a large capital investment, while any future competitors wouldn't.