Blog Posts

The Humanitarian Engineering Response to the Pandemic: The New Year’s Mid-game

By Ben Coombs “As to diseases, make a habit of two things – to help, or at least to do no harm.” written by Hippocrates in Epidemics.
 A Diagram of Major Humanitarian Engineering Efforts (Link allows zooming)   Early in 2020 the alarm bells rang out. All across the world people tuned into news about […]

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Fraunhofer Institute & Public Invention

Recently, Public Invention President Robert L. Read and other volunteers assisted a project with students from Fraunhofer Institute. The Institute released a press release summarized here: In April, COVID-19 began straining healthcare systems as we saw supply-chain breakdowns leading to ventilator shortages. To help mitigate this, individuals, communities, companies, and research institutions began to design

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Our progress and plans: An open letter about the VentMon to donors and grantors

— Robert L. Read In June and July, Public Invention applied for and received two $20,000 grants, one from the Mozilla Open Source Software (MOSS) Foundation, and one from Protocol labs, specifically to develop, make, and give away free-of-charge, the “VentMon” tester for invasive and non-invasive ventilators. The MOSS foundation grant had stronger legal language

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A Summary of Activity by Public Invention Supported by Protocol Labs

Protocols Labs has been a major support for organizations such as Public Invention which have been addressing the most extraordinary health crisis of this century: the COVID-19 pandemic. Public Invention co-hosted free virtual mini-cons VentCon 2020 and VentConQA, attended by 115 and 50 people respectively (slides and videos at those links). These events drew together

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Videos and Slides from Vent-Con QA Available Now!

Thank you to all our talented speakers and teams who presented at our virtual mini-con Vent-Con QA, where we discussed pandemic ventilators in the context of quality assurance and regulatory compliance. Each presenter provided a unique and important perspective, as we heard experts from diverse fields discuss medical, risk, design, and various other aspects of

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Public Invention Receives $20,000 Grant from Mozilla Open Source Support Foundation

We are pleased to thank the Mozilla Open Source Support Foundation for a generous grant of $20,000 specifically to make and give away the VentMon free-of-charge. The VentMon is one of our most active projects in the fight against COVID-19. The VentMon is a device for measuring pressure, flow, oxygen, temperature and humidity produced by

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Videos from Vent-Con 2020 Available Now!

The videos from Vent-Con 2020 are available now! On May 21st, Public Invention co-hosted Vent-Con 2020–an Open Source Ventilator Conference–along with Helpful Engineering, Make.co, and Ventilators Collaboration Network. The mini-conference/webinar reviewed the impressive progress, discussed the uncertain present, and forged a path forward into the future for makers, philanthropists, investors, government officials, medical professionals, and

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