Medtronic Is Sharing Its Portable Ventilator Design Specifications and Code for Free to All

This checklist has been developed to support hospital preparedness for the management of COVID-19 patients. The elements described in the list may not be applicable to all hospitals and may need to be adapted to the specific characteristics of the hospital, the individual national health system, legislation and community where the hospital is located.

Healthcare and biomedical engineering company Medtronic was in the news recently because Tesla CEO Elon Musk had discussions with the company about the automaker’s potential plans to build ventilator hardware in order to address the COVID-19 crisis. Today it’s doing something potentially far more impactful. Medtronic is making available to anyone the full design specifications, produce manuals, design documents and, in the future, software code for its Puritan Bennett (PB) 560 portable ventilator hardware.

The PB 560 ventilator has a number of advantages, one being that it’s a relatively compact and lightweight piece of equipment that can be easily moved around and installed for use in a range of different healthcare environments and settings. And it’s a design that was originally introduced in 2010, so it has a decade of qualified, safe medical use in treating patients.