Medtronic is Offering its Trusted Ventilator's Full Design and Specs to Everyone

Medtronic, a reputed biomedical engineering company, is opening up the full design details and specifications of its PB 560 ventilator to anyone who can make use of it to make more ventilators by volume. The Medtronic Puritan Bennett 560 is a tried and tested ventilator, which has been in active medical use for nearly a full decade now. As a result, it does not have issues such as the need for being tested first before being deployed across the medical industry. Medtronic is now offering design specifications and production manuals to any interested party already, and in future, possibly even the software code for the PB 560.

Medtronic's decision to open up the use of the PB 560's design is a thoughtful one. Despite multiple automobile manufacturers and engineering companies, such as Ford and Dyson, looking to contribute to the global coronavirus pandemic, ventilators remain intricate and high precision medical instruments, which in turn require numerous smaller components sourced from a diverse set of sources. While the same does apply for the Medtronic PB 560 too, the latter is one of the more simplified ventilator designs, which in turn would take lesser effort on behalf of a factory producer to programme their tools to, or even source components for.

The PB 560 is also hailed for being super compact and lightweight, alongside being portable. This means that it can actually be deployed at any location without the need for hauling over heavy equipment. It is this that is the need of the hour, since countries that are being hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis are resorting to makeshift healthcare spaces to address patients. Its compact size also means that the overall manufacturing, shipping and deployment timespans would be far lesser than a heavier, high performance ventilator.

If the claim stands true, Medtronic may potentially make a massive impact on the entire world's requirement of ventilators. The open sourcing of its full design and manufacturing details can help numerous startups and organisations to establish manufacturing chains of ventilators, and it now remains to be seen how the PB 560's design is eventually implemented. Medtronic's open source licensing of its ventilator technology will remain valid for as long as the WHO declares the pandemic to be over.