Israeli Medical Volunteers Release Ventilator Blueprints Using Off-the-shelf Parts

An Israeli volunteer group released blueprints for ventilators made from commercially available components, and the Israel division of Medtronicreleased its proprietary ventilator blueprints for free.

By Aaron Bandler, Jewish Journal via JNS

Last week, a team of more than 40 Israeli volunteer physicians, engineers and students released blueprints for ventilators made from off-the-shelf components, under the name AmboVent.

During the same time frame, the Israel division of the medical-device company Medtronic also announced it will provide the blueprints for its ventilators to companies seeking to manufacture them, free of charge.

Medtronic’s Israel division CEO Yaron Yitzhari made the announcement to Arutz Sheva on Wednesday.

“Our goal is to prolong lives—to save lives, in fact,” he said. “This is what’s needed right now, in the emergency situation we’re in, and this consideration comes before everything else.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a global “demand for literally hundreds of thousands of machines, when global production usually runs to maybe a few thousand a month,” he said, adding that Medtronic already has doubled its ventilator production and is aiming to triple it in the coming weeks.

Yitzhari said he didn’t think that his decision would negatively impact the firm’s profit margin.

“Our company manufacturers thousands of products,” he said. “Ventilators are just one of those products, and this is an emergency situation. We have many other products that we sell for profit.”

In response, the Simon Wiesenthal Center tweeted: “G-d bless Israel’s Medtronic and its CEO Yaron Yitzhari for releasing its patents and sharing the know-how for its ventilators to help save countless lives worldwide!”

According to TechCrunch, Medtronic announced on March 30 that it is releasing the design specifications of its Puritan Bennett (PB) 560 portable ventilator to help meet the global demand.

This article first appeared in the Jewish Journal.

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