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Open-Source Hardware May Address the Shortage in Medical Devices for Patients with Low-Income and Chronic Respiratory Diseases in Low-Resource Countries

Respiratory diseases pose an increasing socio-economic burden worldwide given their high prevalence and their elevated morbidity and mortality. Medical devices play an important role in managing acute and chronic respiratory failure, including diagnosis, monitoring, and providing artificial ventilat...

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Autores principales: Farré, Ramon, Gozal, David, Nguyen, Viet-Nhung, Pearce, Joshua M., Dinh-Xuan, Anh Tuan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9502622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36143283
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jpm12091498
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author Farré, Ramon
Gozal, David
Nguyen, Viet-Nhung
Pearce, Joshua M.
Dinh-Xuan, Anh Tuan
author_facet Farré, Ramon
Gozal, David
Nguyen, Viet-Nhung
Pearce, Joshua M.
Dinh-Xuan, Anh Tuan
author_sort Farré, Ramon
collection PubMed
description Respiratory diseases pose an increasing socio-economic burden worldwide given their high prevalence and their elevated morbidity and mortality. Medical devices play an important role in managing acute and chronic respiratory failure, including diagnosis, monitoring, and providing artificial ventilation. Current commercially available respiratory devices are very effective but, given their cost, are unaffordable for most patients in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Herein, we focus on a relatively new design option—the open-source hardware approach—that, if implemented, will contribute to providing low-cost respiratory medical devices for many patients in LMICs, particularly those without full medical insurance coverage. Open source reflects a set of approaches to conceive and distribute the comprehensive technical information required for building devices. The open-source approach enables free and unrestricted use of the know-how to replicate and manufacture the device or modify its design for improvements or adaptation to different clinical settings or personalized treatments. We describe recent examples of open-source devices for diagnosis/monitoring (measuring inspiratory/expiratory pressures or flow and volume in mechanical ventilators) and for therapy (non-invasive ventilators for adults and continuous positive airway pressure support for infants) that enable building simple, low-cost (hence, affordable), and high-performance solutions for patients in LMICs. Finally, we argue that the common practice of approving clinical trials by the local hospital ethics board can be expanded to ensure patient safety by reviewing, inspecting, and approving open hardware for medical application to maximize the innovation and deployment rate of medical technologies.
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spelling pubmed-95026222022-09-24 Open-Source Hardware May Address the Shortage in Medical Devices for Patients with Low-Income and Chronic Respiratory Diseases in Low-Resource Countries Farré, Ramon Gozal, David Nguyen, Viet-Nhung Pearce, Joshua M. Dinh-Xuan, Anh Tuan J Pers Med Review Respiratory diseases pose an increasing socio-economic burden worldwide given their high prevalence and their elevated morbidity and mortality. Medical devices play an important role in managing acute and chronic respiratory failure, including diagnosis, monitoring, and providing artificial ventilation. Current commercially available respiratory devices are very effective but, given their cost, are unaffordable for most patients in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Herein, we focus on a relatively new design option—the open-source hardware approach—that, if implemented, will contribute to providing low-cost respiratory medical devices for many patients in LMICs, particularly those without full medical insurance coverage. Open source reflects a set of approaches to conceive and distribute the comprehensive technical information required for building devices. The open-source approach enables free and unrestricted use of the know-how to replicate and manufacture the device or modify its design for improvements or adaptation to different clinical settings or personalized treatments. We describe recent examples of open-source devices for diagnosis/monitoring (measuring inspiratory/expiratory pressures or flow and volume in mechanical ventilators) and for therapy (non-invasive ventilators for adults and continuous positive airway pressure support for infants) that enable building simple, low-cost (hence, affordable), and high-performance solutions for patients in LMICs. Finally, we argue that the common practice of approving clinical trials by the local hospital ethics board can be expanded to ensure patient safety by reviewing, inspecting, and approving open hardware for medical application to maximize the innovation and deployment rate of medical technologies. MDPI 2022-09-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9502622/ /pubmed/36143283 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jpm12091498 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Farré, Ramon
Gozal, David
Nguyen, Viet-Nhung
Pearce, Joshua M.
Dinh-Xuan, Anh Tuan
Open-Source Hardware May Address the Shortage in Medical Devices for Patients with Low-Income and Chronic Respiratory Diseases in Low-Resource Countries
title Open-Source Hardware May Address the Shortage in Medical Devices for Patients with Low-Income and Chronic Respiratory Diseases in Low-Resource Countries
title_full Open-Source Hardware May Address the Shortage in Medical Devices for Patients with Low-Income and Chronic Respiratory Diseases in Low-Resource Countries
title_fullStr Open-Source Hardware May Address the Shortage in Medical Devices for Patients with Low-Income and Chronic Respiratory Diseases in Low-Resource Countries
title_full_unstemmed Open-Source Hardware May Address the Shortage in Medical Devices for Patients with Low-Income and Chronic Respiratory Diseases in Low-Resource Countries
title_short Open-Source Hardware May Address the Shortage in Medical Devices for Patients with Low-Income and Chronic Respiratory Diseases in Low-Resource Countries
title_sort open-source hardware may address the shortage in medical devices for patients with low-income and chronic respiratory diseases in low-resource countries
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9502622/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36143283
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jpm12091498
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