Medtronic Shares Its Ventilator Design Specifications for Free to Help with COVID-19 Pandemic

Biomedical engineering company Medtronic has decided to publically release the full design specifications, produce manuals, design documents and software code for one of its portable ventilators, the Puritan Bennett (PB) 560.

The decision comes after the company met with Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, wherein he expressed his intention to manufacture ventilators in light of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

What this means for others worldwide is that everyone now has the ability to reproduce the model without any costs or fees owed to Medtronic, allowing them to produce a bulk of necessary healthcare technology without the time, money, and research it takes to conjure up a design of their own.

Something to keep in mind; the design for the ventilator is not exactly open sourced, but rather operating on a permissive license, meaning that on October 1, 2024 (or when the World Health Organization declares the pandemic is over) manufacturers will no longer be able to recreate the machine free of cost. So get while the getting's good.