VentMon: An open source inline ventilator tester and monitor

Humanitarian engineers responded to the pandemic ventilator shortage of March, 2020 by beginning over 100 open source ventilator projects [Robert L. Read et al. COVID-19 Vent List. Oct. 2020. url: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1inYw5H4RiL0AC_J9vPWzJxXCdlkMLPBRdPgEVKF8DZw/edit#gid=0, Joshua M. Pearce. A review of open source ventilators for COVID-19 and future pandemics. In: F1000Research 9 (2020).]. By ventilator, we mean both an invasive ventilator (requiring intubation of the patient) and non-invasive ventilator (generally supporting spontaneously breathing). Inexpensive ventilator test equipment can facilitate projects forced to be geographically distributed by lockdowns. The VentMon is a modular, open source, IoT-enabled tester that plugs into a standard 22 mm airway between a ventilator and a physical test lung to test any ventilator. The VentMon measures flow, pressure, fractional oxygen, humidity, and temperature. Data is stored and graphed at a data lake accessible to all devlopment team members, and, eventually, clinicians. The open source design of the VentMon, its firmware, and cloud-based software may allow it to be used as a component of modular ventilators to provide a clinical readout. The software system surrounding VentMon has been designed to be as modular and composable as possible. By combining new, openly published standards for data with composable and modifiable hardware, the VentMon forms the beginning of an open system or eco-system of ventilation devices and data. Thanks to grants, 20 VentMons have been given away free of charge to pandemic response teams building open source ventilators.