The Code Life Ventilator Challenge is a 2-week sprint to collect the best ideas from anywhere in the world to create or design life-saving ventilators. It’s a joint initiative between the Montreal General Hospital Foundation and the RI-MUHC.

The Montreal General Hospital Foundation, in collaboration with the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), is launching a global innovation challenge, backed by a prize of $200,000 CAD. They are calling for teams to design a simple, low-cost, easy-to-manufacture and easy-to-maintain ventilator which could be deployed anywhere needed to save lives.  

What we know

With potentially up to 70% of the population on the brink of being infected by COVID-19, our worldwide health care systems will be strained beyond their limits. Even now, there aren't enough ventilators to save everyone who needs respiratory support, and doctors are having to make agonizing decisions about whom to save. Our modern world provides the means to produce these life-saving ventilators thanks to widespread rapid manufacturing tools—3D printers, CNC machines— combined with low-cost computers (e.g. smartphones, Arduinos, etc.), but what we're missing is a design.

The challenge

The goal is to design a low-cost, simple, easy-to-use and easy-to-build ventilator that can serve the COVID patients, in an emergency timeframe. It should be easy to build locally, its functionality must be easy to verify, and must meet the design requirements specified on the challenge website.

Leading researchers and medical staff at the Montreal General Hospital have assembled a committee of expert advisors (ICU physicians, engineers, etc.) who have defined specifications for this ventilator challenge and who will be judging submissions.

The top three designs will be available for free download to anyone who needs them, saving lives immediately. Start now, we have no time to lose! See the challenge rules here.

The challenge is powered by Agorize, a leading platform for open innovation challenges.

Registration

The deadline to submit your project is March 31, 2020.

For more information and to enrol to the challenge: http://bit.ly/CodeLifeMGH

We need YOU to design a simple, functional, reliable and easy to manufacture ventilator to provide life support to COVID-19 patients anywhere in the world.