OSE Principles of Collaborative Design for COVID

Intro

OSE aims to uncover and facilitate different avenues for larger numbers of people (with free time right now) to get involved in producing solutions for COVID, by identifying tasks that many available people can do, while not requiring excessive training. There are many such activities under way, and as such OSE would like to facilitate execution on the highest priority items.

Priorities: protective equipment for front line workers, halt of spread, with testing and selective isolation - and promotion of immune people to front-line tasks. This is reflected in this article - [1]

We believe that halt of spread must start with first caring for first responders: nurses, EMTs, firefighters, doctors, medical staff. Then identifying immune people to join the front line work in first response, hospitals, party wards.

OSE Direction

Joining or leading efforts for:

1. Identifying the best candidates for, developing, and 3D printing N95 masks, face shields, PAPRs, ventilators, and in general - building blocks and parts of medical infrastructure
2. Making widespread availability of protective equipment for first responsders, then general public.
3. Widespread access to testing, leading to proper and voluntary/enforced isolation decisions (depending on the situation). And allowing immune people to get back to normal lives - and to run the front line.

More Detail

1. Develop designs for and produce masks, PAPRs, ventilators via distributed manufacturing using common, off-the-shelf parts. Including import substitution by building components that are at risk of being disrupted.
   1. Focus on production of open source parts, which can be developed by many people with printers
   2. Create an open part library and wiki page template for mass documentation of equipment and parts
   3. Coordinate a team with a Kanban board
2. Develop production of Melt Blown Plastic mask material (not first priority, work with existing supply chains first)
3. Developing widespread access to 3D printers with 12" or larger print beds, including printers with high temperature build chambers to print using high performance or medical grade plastics
4. Coordinate information flows regarding access to COVID testing, and encouraging individuals who are up for the challenge in every town everywhere to make that test available to their community. Coordinating with first response teams and leadership to assure access.
5. Coordinate creation of temporary hospitals or party sites for the infected, to halt spread to healthy people.

Approach

1. Focus on open source access, editability, participation with zero barriers to entry. All design is open and accessible, and provided in open source file formats. We assume we don't have to police use by blocking access - which in our view blocks open innovation.
2. For technical development of machines, parts, and infrastructures - involve many people in research and development tasks by lowering barriers to participation. Lowering barriers to participaton includes:
   1. identifying common tasks that need to be done, and can be done by many people
   2. Calling out people to get involved in proactive work
   3. Providing background information and training
   4. Providing development guidance via modular approach of breaking problems into small parts using known product development processes.
   5. Working at the level of modular, construction set appraoch - to produce modules. These include valves, filters, controllers, clean room filters, clean room designs, PPE components, sensors, and other enabling building blocks for medical infrastructure.
   6. Doing in house testing, securing approval from official bodies, and Working with end-users to make sure devices work as expected.
3. For production:
   1. Make recommendations of best designs to replicate or build
   2. Open source the supply chain by documenting available sources
   3. Augment industrial supply chains with new capacity from distributed startups that produce the necessary parts or equipment, by virtue of open source design
4. Approach to COVID testing:
   1. Once an easy test procedure for COVID is identified, encourage production of that test until universal testing is achieved at minimal cost ($1/test or lower)
   2. Assisting professional labs in producing tests by enabling DIY bio labs to run the tests
   3. Develop

Specific Points of Action, Highest Priority on Top

1. Identify most promising open source N95 mask, face shields, ventilators and PAPR design and improve it and produce it
2. Develop components that are producible with 3D printers and open source design.
3. Promote PPE collection and distribution to first line workers (hospital, EMT, firefighters) as a distributed effort in all locations worldwide starting with the local community
4. Distributed DIY production methods for COVID tests to augment access in all locations, including low-resource scenarios. Identify and secure B-Cell culture for COVID antibodies. Identify who has them, and if they are willing to share it openly. One possibility: Contact United Biomedical to see if they can release a B-cell monoclonal antibody-producing culture to the public for mass replication in all available bio labs including DIY bio labs - [2]

Links

1. COVID Development and Open_Source_N95_Face_Mask as case study of development.
2. Open Source N95 Face Mask
3. Open Source PAPR Development
4. Open Source Face Shield
5. Open Source Ventilator
6. How to Set Up a DIY Bio Lab.