We are part of an international consortium of emergency ventilator designers. Groups from all parts of the world jump on a daily call at noon Hawaii time. Today we heard awesome news! One of the groups got the first FDA approval for emergency use.

We spent an hour with the head doc leading that effort, Dr. Stephen Richardson. Here is a pic of him from my screen on our lunchtime zoom.

Herein lies the balance. This team’s ventilator has one feature. You can change the respiratory rate (breaths per minute) and that’s it. No alarms, sensors, gauges, feedback, and settings. Every patient gets the same amount of respiratory care. The doc said that is what it took for them to get approval. They start shipping next week and have at least 3,000 orders in hand. Even this setup saves lives.

We have sensors, gauges, alarms, and a whole slew of settings to personalize the respiratory care for the patient. We are getting new guidance for instance to target lower tidal volumes so we engineered that setting in, too. We are hopeful we are going to get FDA approval too and planning on submitting in the next 48 hours or less.

Wish us luck!

On Facebook, follow team Kahanu (Blair, Jeffrey, Kai, Peter, Ryan, and me) for updates. Mahalo to the Hawaii Community Foundation‘s Resilience Fund for providing these life saving devices across our entire state.

Here is the ventilator that got approved yesterday. There is a great video on that page with Dr. Richardson.

From Olin Lagon on Facebook.