No human being should be denied proper care because of a lack of medical devices. That’s the assumption that originated a unique project aimed at saving lives during the pandemic.

As Covid-19 spread across Northern Italy and the world, around 6% of the people infected needed help to breath and effective medical intervention requires the use of mechanical ventilation, which is used in hospitals to pump oxygen into the lungs and then to remove carbon dioxide as the patient breathes out. Unfortunately, due to the high number of patients in need of this intervention, the existing production lines couldn’t meet the local and global needs.

An innovative idea that expanded rapidly
 

An innovative idea originated in the international research project, The Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration, that includes experience with gas handling systems and complex control systems – the same capabilities required in hospital ventilators.

And last spring Cristiano Galbiati, the spokesperson for the GADM Collaboration, received government permission to develop a first prototype of a mechanical ventilator, the Mechanical Ventilator Milano, or MVM.

The project expanded rapidly to include national laboratories, Princeton University and educational institutions around the world. As Studio Volpi we took part to the project, supporting our client Elemaster Group - certified experts in the design and production of medical devices - who has been the coordinator since the early phases of the Ventilator development, enabling the implementation of the first prototypes.

The MVM Ventilator: ethical, open-source and accessible
 

Silvia also underlines the strong ethical mission of the MVM Ventilator: “The scope of the work was to develop an accessible mechanical ventilator. First of all the project is completely open source, so that anyone around the world can take part to it and also use it to build their own ventilator”.

The MVM Ventilator project, furthermore, has been developed to be built with easily accessible materials and technologies so that its production can be carried out everywhere in the world with locally sourced materials. The product has been developed also for maximum compatibility with electricity and oxygen distribution networks, which are different depending on the geographical context.

The MVM Ventilator is not only a technically accessible solution, but it’s also a cost-effective machine, priced less of a traditional mechanical ventilator.

The development process of the ventilator is also unique: it was approved by the FDA, the US Food and Drugs Association, in only few months, thus becoming immediately accessible to hospitals and medical facilities.

Download the Mechanical Ventilator Milano Case

To learn more about our projects, go to our latest Insights. And stay tuned for more content about the MVM Ventilator project and ethics in Product Design and Engineering.