I vehemently disagree.? Liability is a huge concern.? Maybe not for you if you have not contributed directly.? Consider that I own Ten Tec.? I have four MYDATA pick and place machines and a 12,000 square foot industrial building that is essentially my retirement.? Why is medical cost so high in the US?? One factor is liability insurance from malpractice.? There are no poor doctors or hospital employees in the US.? There are a predatory class of attorneys that sue for any reason IF their intended target has any assets they can get.? How often do you see a poor person being sued?? A doctor living in a mansion is a target because he has money. It doesn't matter if he committed malpractice or not. What matters is if the attorney can wring a settlement out of his insurance company.? If he isn't insured enough he will loose his mansion.? That predatory?attorney and the law doesn't care about right or wrong -? he is there to extort some sort of payment for his client. The more he can get, the higher his percentage.? If you want to fix the health care crisis in the US then outlaw malpractice. Lets face it -? if you go to a doctor and let him cut on you, you probably are going to die without his intervention. So when you come in the door of the ER you are a dead man walking. A corpse waiting to happen.? You might not make it, and it has nothing to do with malpractice.? Are there bad and incompetent doctors?? You bet. Every once in a while one slips through the cracks.? But how many people are denied health care because of the high cost of health care mandated by malpractice and all the insurance paperwork?? I'm one of them! Ask ANY small business owner about it. I would NEVER open my own business again given the current state of health care and insurance in the US. The American dream is dead. Work on a better system of checks and balances than malpractice insurance!? Notice the problem is the insurance company -? they make money on both sides of the system -? from the patient and from the doctor.? Get rid of the insurance companies is the solution.? Get rid of malpractice.? If a doctor looses too many cases then have him face a review board by the hospital and the licensing state and if he gets too many strikes YANK HIS LICENSE FOR GOOD.? Just like a DWI.? How much money is made by insurance companies year after year?? How much of the national debt was increased to bail them out when they screwed the pooch?? Too big to fail?? Are you serious?? Here is a thought Quit spending money on health insurance and malpractice insurance and put that money to work on something that is needed -? HEALTH CARE. Lets hire and train more doctors and nurses and build new hospitals so EVERYONE can have health care.? When are we going to get current with the rest of modern first world countries and recognize that HEALTH CARE should be a basic human right?? Why is your life worth more than mine just because of financial circumstances?? We say all life is precious. We talk the talk but we don't do the walk. We don't even crawl. We brag that small business is the engine of opportunity and growth yet it is small business that slips through the cracks of the system and nobody anywhere does anything about it or even cares. You know why you don't care?? Because if you did you would do something to fix the problem!
But to my original point -? I'd love to help and I'm in a position to help. I could build my control next week and if I had money I could build thousands of them.? But how can I put everything I have worked for my entire life at risk?? I was not included in the developers covered by the UF liability insurance for whatever reason.? I have a control ready to make the PC Board for that has safety interlocks and a number of other features for patient safety that are missing on the present UF unit.? But I'm not a rich doctor. I am working class poor. Because I own a company that has bills and employees that have to be paid and they get paid before I do.? If there is anything left for me, I don't dare spend it because I might run short next month.? I can build packaged ventilators for 500 dollars of parts each, yet I will have to sell it for 5000 each to deal with the liability issues.? I'm highly frustrated because I have the desire to help, engineering experience from high volume (millions) of appliance controls under my belt, and the manufacturing facility and equipment to fast track this to production.? I can do things faster and less expensive than GM, yet no one has responded to my emails at wither the White House or the Ohio Governor's office. Then there is the matter of the FDA blessing and having to file for this myself.? How can I or anyone else do this to help or to do it on a not for profit basis?? It ends up being more work than producing our regular business of manufacturing radios and circuit boards.?So basically I've wasted 300 hours of productive time that could have been used to take care of my own problems like the laid off employees due to the government suspension of my business. I get NO INCOME whatsoever if I don't work and charge customers and my business is forcibly shut down. ?I started out trying to help as you suggest and ended up getting burned. This will be my last involvement with open source anything ever. Anybody in a position to help me help others?? Quit flapping your gums and step up. I'm driving a 25 year old car and can't afford health insurance.? I tried to help.? Show me how I can do it and not loose what little I have.? But don't you dare tell me liability isn't a concern.
So, what is going to happen since no one can afford to take this liability on, this will fester and people needing ventilators are going to die. That is the price that we pay for letting insurance companies, attorneys, administrators and governing bodies like the FDA to regulate and take all power away from a physician to actually do what a physician needs to do -? treat a patient.? The money we spend on the salaries of all the dead weight employees of the insurance companies and profits to the share holders of those companies is more than what we actually spend on treating patients. You can NOT? allow health insurance companies to operate at a for profit model because the soie responsibility for any CEO is to maximize profit for the share holders and unfortunately that means cut the cost spent on healthcare that directly effects the quality of care the patient receives. How many times have you heard of insurance denying proceedures and care to patients?? Isn't that up to the doctor and not some nurse hired by the insurance company to oversee who gets what care?? The system is broken. Shut it down and reboot!
If you can help and have a solution put your money where you mouth is. I'll finish my design work and build it if you take the liability.
I doubt this effort will amount to anything at this point. There are too many uncertainties to deal with including the safety if the software libraries used. I learned there is a group using multiple 3D printers to reproduce a 1965 US Army designed analog controlled ventilator that take 12 dollars of parts to manufacture so this probably is not the way to go.
The control board for this effort is not trivial enough that you would hand assemble it.? I doubt 3rd world people could get the funding necessary to go somewhere and have them built. I suppose ou can have them made in China, the lawless country which made this problem in the first place, because if they build it then the attorneys will realize that they cant\'t get money out of the Chinese so there will be no law suits.?Isn't it funny that the country who let this virus off the chain will actually profit from sales of materials necessary to make the ventilators? this isn't an accident -? it is negligence or an act of war and the entire world is paying the price.? But that isn't the issue.? The issue is how do we mitigate and control the damage at this point?? We have something that probably will work and save SOME patients.? If it is a choice of certain death because of no ventilator as opposed to a chance to live on whatever contraption is available, which would every one of us choose? Certain death or a chance a tife.? What is the right answer?? Do we have to even ask this question?? How many trakes have been legendarily implemented with a ball point pen?? Is that pen FDA approved?? It is up to the ATTENDING PHYSICIAN to determine the level of treatment with whatever is available, and since the dawn of medicine the standard has been to DO NO HARM.? So if that standard is applied, in this case the choice between certain death and ventilation, why do we even have to worry about liability?? That is the issue. Save a life and loose everything you worked all our life for, and end up homeless under the underpass living in a cardboard box. Maybe you can make that choice for yourself but what about for your entire family?
You can help and make it happen?? My phone is 614 675 2497 and it rings right to my desk.? Which one of you is going to step up and take the liability that isn't important?
Mike N8WFF.
