3D printing firm Stratasys Ltd. has named the finalists of its COVID-19-related hackathon.
("Hackathon" sounds like something that makes you want to change all of your online passwords, but in this case it's a good thing.)
More than 200 teams from around the world submitted designs for a rapidly deployable ventilator as part of the firm's "CoVent-19 Challenge." Seven teams have been selected to participate and will be building prototypes for testing by judges led by anesthesiology resident physicians from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
"Health care systems around the world continue to face a period of great uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic," said Richard Boyer, founder and director of the CoVent-19 Challenge. "As anesthesiologists, we are experts at using ventilators to care for critical ill patients and believe there is an opportunity for innovative new designs particularly for areas where standard mechanical ventilators may be hard to obtain."
The finalist teams are:
• SmithVent, a team of Smith College of Northampton, Mass., engineering alumni and friends.
• CORE Vent, submitted by Ross Hunter of Armadilla Ltd. of Edinburgh, Scotland.
• InVent Pneumatic Ventilator, submitted by Fuseproject, a design and innovation firm base in San Francisco, Cionic, a medical device technology company, also of San Francisco, and a mechanical engineering team from Accenture's office in Seattle.
• RespiraWorks, a global team of dozens of engineers, healthcare workers and other professionals with a focus on developing countries and low-resource communities.
• OP Vent, submitted by a team from Nvidia of Santa Clara, Calif.; Waymo of Mountain View, Calif.; Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.; and VA Palo Alto Health Care System.
• Lung Evolve, submitted by an engineering team from the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá, Colombia and Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia.
• Baxter Ventilator, submitted by a team of educators, students, and alumni from Baxter Academy for Technology and Science in Portland, Maine.
"The CoVent-19 Challenge has been an amazing demonstration of what's possible when a global community of innovators comes together for the common good," Stratasys Chief Innovation Officer Scott Crump said. "In one month, we have gone from a problem statement to remarkably creative solutions from students and professionals, engineers and designers, from everywhere.
"It brightens my spirit during what is otherwise a pretty dark time for our world," he said.
Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Stratasys has provided a team of three application engineers to work with the finalists to build working prototypes utilizing Stratasys 3D printers as needed. The prototypes will be evaluated to determine which design provides the best combination of performance against safety, reliability, manufacturability, affordability and simplicity.
The goal is to declare a winner by the beginning of June, with the CoVent-19 Challenge residents then working with the winning team to bring it to market, including securing FDA approval for the device.
Other sponsors of the CoVent-19 Challenge include Ximedica, Valispace, HackFund and Yelling Mule.
Stratasys provides 3D printing solutions including printers, materials, software, expert services and on-demand parts production.