A low-cost ventilator design developed with the assistance of radio amateurs will soon be on its way to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for review.
According to a recent posting on the ARRL website, the ventilator design was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Florida Health. The team included Dr. Gordon Gibby (KX4Z), a retired professor of anesthesiology at the school who also happens to be an electrical engineer and a radio amateur. Gibby teamed up with radio amateurs Bob Benedict (KD8CGH), Jack Purdum (W8TEE), Ashhar Farhan (VU2ESE) and others to design a ventilator controller schematic and then to build and test a trial printed circuit board prior to large-scale fabrication.
The team is now reportedly preparing an application to submit a working version of the ventilator system to the FDA for review under its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) protocol.
