A new ventilator model for COVID-19 patients, Mechanical Ventilator Milano (MVM), which is now entering mass production, has been developed from scratch over the past six weeks by an international team of particle and nuclear physicist active in the Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration, working together with industry and healthcare partners. The design of the device is openly available under a free license and the total cost is very low due to a simple mechanical design and the use of a number of standardized parts available off-the-shelf, which will facilitate rapid mass production. MVM is also modular and adapted to swap out parts based on their availability in different regions of the world, which makes it easily replicable. An important milestone has been achieved today with the official announcement of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization issued for the ventilator, which has been obtained following the intense period of development, prototyping and testing. MVM can now be used on patients and will contribute to saving many lives.
The MVM project has involved institutions mainly from Italy, Canada and the United States. Scientists from AstroCeNT played an important role in the project, in particular Dr Wada and Dr Suchenek, who were responsible for software quality assurance and testing; dr Wada led and coordinated establishing the software workflow needed to fulfill the FDA requirements, as well as analyzed data from test modules, validating the MVM functionality. See also https://astrocent.camk.edu.pl/astrocent-contributes-to-international-project-to-fight-covid-19-pandemics.
