Our Changing World - Part 2/3

Yesterday I introduced this series of articles where each article addresses the mother of invention, necessity, and how our world is rapidly changing, and what's happening in these spaces, which you may or may not know about. If you haven't seen it yet, please check out the first article: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/our-changing-world-part-13-vanessa-julia-carpenter/ Today's article is all about digital fabrication, making and hacking, and what's happening right now in these times of COVID-19. Yesterday's was about entertainment and the innovations being made there, and tomorrow we'll look at Meaningfulness in technology and how our lives are changing.

This article will cover a LOT of new, emerging technologies and solutions and so some will be less detailed than others, but all will have links to more information you can check out. Again, the theme here is innovation, how, in a matter of days, people are banding together, pooling resources, developing open-source solutions, and co-creating to help solve this crisis. Let's dive in:

The Corona Virus Tech Handbook emerged a few days ago, and since has received thousands of updates. I can't explain it better than they did so I'll just copy paste:

"The Coronavirus Tech Handbook provides a space for technologists, specialists, civic organisations and public & private institutions to collaborate on a rapid and sophisticated response to the coronavirus outbreak. It is an active and evolving resource with thousands of expert contributors."

This guide covers everything from how to work remotely as an employee or employer, how to teach and entertain your kids, data and infographics about the virus, advice, how to fight misinformation, how to host events, and so much more. It's a HUGE resource and definitely worth checking out. Not only that, the links within it link to almost all the projects I'm presenting here today and MANY more. https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/

PSFK, my go-to source for useful reports of what's happening in the moment, has an interesting list of how companies and services are adapting to these times. This list is quite useful to start thinking about how people will react to the pandemic, especially since it gives examples from market shifts in China in the past, such as during the SARS epidemic. Check it out: https://www.psfk.com/2020/02/impact-of-corona-virus-on-innovation.html

There are so many developments happening in products and hardware right now that it's tough to keep up - which is an amazing thing.

Masks:

There's a lot of debate about masks right now which I won't get into. What I will say is that the Corona Virus Tech Handbook has a huge section on this, featuring masks which can be made from a variety of available materials. https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/hardware

A mask challenge has been called for https://awrd.com/en/award/mask-design-challenge from the FabCafe Global society. Another is this one: https://copper3d.com/hackthepandemic/ where you can download the 3D files for this mask.

And you might be wondering why all the focus on masks - it's because health care providers are ALREADY running out of masks, as this Bloomberg article points to: "Hospital workers in Washington state have been making protective medical gear out of office supplies and other run-of-the-mill materials as they deal with a severe shortage of equipment needed to care for patients who may have Covid-19." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/hospital-makes-face-masks-covid-19-shields-from-office-supplies

Ventilators

Hackaday is my go-to source for all things maker and they have their own list of interesting ventilator projects here: https://hackaday.com/tag/ventilator/ with a call to action, asking for ventilator designs from makers and pointing to this Facebook Group, "Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies": https://www.facebook.com/groups/670932227050506/about/ which is described as "This group is being formed to evaluate, design, validate, and source the fabrication of open source emergency medical supplies around the world, given a variety of local supply conditions. " And this brings us to a VERY interesting project, the 3D printed valve.

3D Printed Valves

You've probably heard the story. Hospitals in Italy ran out of these valves. They couldn't order more from the supplier (supplier was out of stock). Someone in the hospital figured out they could design a 3D model and print them, and voila, valves are being printed. They're not ideal but they are working. If you haven't read about it - do so here, the Fast Company version: https://www.fastcompany.com/90477940/these-good-samaritans-with-a-3d-printer-are-saving-lives-by-making-new-respirator-valves-for-free or the 3D Printer society version: https://www.3dprintingmedia.network/covid-19-3d-printed-valve-for-reanimation-device/

There is a rumour that the individuals were threatened with legal action (it was actually just about blueprints which are patent protected) - they address this in the Fast Company article above. Nonetheless, to solve that problem, someone else designed a new valve from scratch which is 100% open source and can be accessed here: https://grabcad.com/library/respirator-free-reanimation-venturi-s-valve-1 and seen here:

What is truly beautiful about the 3D printed valve project, in all its forms, are all the makers out there who are volunteering their time and energy to 3D print valves and ship them to whoever needs it. Many of these makers have access to higher end machines, and people on the Facebook Group are asking if anyone needs it printed in different materials. This shows the incredible opportunities that open-source communities gives us. No, it's not medically approved, no, none of these people have been through some regulatory process but at the end of the day, if this gets bad, we're going to have an army of people who is there, ready to help make the medical supplies we need. Here's a few offers from the Facebook Group Open Source COVID19 Medical Supplies.

" I am a SolidWorks designer, currently working for a medical device manufacturing company, with extensive 3dPrinting experience, and I want to help where I can."

Wayne Johnson

"Guys I have 30+ Printers ready to produce in London. Is there anything my machines should be printing RIGHT NOW to save lives?"

Felix Fried

There are few other interesting ventilator projects of note, some from the past which are re-emerging as projects of interest:

This low cost ($100 instead of $30,000) ventilator from 2010 is gaining traction again, and the project is being revisited: https://www.fastcompany.com/1661942/mit-students-invent-100-ventilator-for-disaster-zones The article does not link to the original student's work - but you can read their paper here: https://web.mit.edu/2.75/projects/DMD_2010_Al_Husseini.pdf

Then we have the Pandemic Ventilator here: https://www.instructables.com/id/The-Pandemic-Ventilator/ which is being critiqued by health care providers on Twitter because apparently (and I'm no medical expert) a ventilator requires precision calibration and monitoring. However, I think anyone trying to build something should receive some recognition, because, honestly, at least they're trying. I think this project is actually from 12 years ago, given the comments, but people are revisiting it for the possibility of building it to help our current pandemic. There is an up-to-date (15. March, 2020) YouTube video of the ventilator here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnpnS2w_O6U&feature=youtu.be

We have the ultra low cost ventilator, again, designed out of necessity, from a family in who had a motorbike accident. Comprised of a squeezable resuscitator bag, which is squeezed in turns by the family, 18 times per minute. During the evening, they have rigged up a motor and pole which pushes on the bag, but due to the high cost of electricity they can only run it for part of the day. This particular solution really impresses me, they are doing the best with what they have, and cope with not only a terrible situation (a family member who needs a ventilator) but also find a way to deal with electricity limits. This article is from 2013 - and I can urge you to check out the photos: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2270178/Chinese-man-kept-alive-years-HOMEMADE-ventilator-family-squeeze-18-times-minute.html

Air sterilisation

Researchers in have noted that in Wuhan, the air systems of over populated hospitals could be spreading the virus and designed a system to take contaminated hospital air and sterilize it at high temperatures. Read more here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90478242/this-portable-furnace-could-stop-coronavirus-in-its-tracks

Tests

As many people don't even know if they have the virus, one solution is to swab the environment to see if the virus is present. The Open qPCR hardware aims to do just this at a cost of approximately $10 - $15 per test. Based on BeagleBone, this device has an onboard lab which helps to detect the virus. Learn more at https://www.chaibio.com/coronavirus and also note this project: https://gaudi.ch/PocketPCR/ which is similar but as far as I can see was developed for other purposes. Still an interesting project to check out. 

Everything else

There are just SO many projects going on now. I suggest checking out some of the links above, and some of the groups listed below for updates. These are just a few highlights to showcase what innovation is happening, and how fast it's going.

Software: 

Let's start with probably the most useful and fun one. If you use a FitBit. Hilariously coined the "Jalapeno App" it should help you to stop touching your face by vibrating when you get close to your face. As they say on their site, "Just say: JalapeNO!". https://jalapenoapp.com/ 

For those who don't have a FitBit, there's an Instructable for how to build your own "Don't touch your face" device: https://www.instructables.com/id/Dont-Touch-Face/

For those who are not into devices, there's also the ultra-light, kind of hilarious, webcam version: https://donottouchyourface.com/

On a more serious note, Help With COVID https://helpwithcovid.com/ is a collection of software based projects to help a variety of topics, with everything from grocery delivery for the elderly to 'speed medical matching' where professionals can donate their time and skills to hospitals in need to vaccine R&D dashboards.

Groups, networks, and project lists:

The COVID Accelerator is creating connections between people to help solve real problems right now. Their tag line is "Can we build faster than a virus?" At the time of writing, I haven't been able to find projects related to this as one must sign up for the newsletter and Slack and make an application, but it's worth looking into if you are interested in working on solutions. https://covidaccelerator.com/

COVID Base: https://covidbase.com/ is an ever-updating project list in areas such as 'reducing infection', 'resource match-making', 'data and protocols', 'research and treatment', 'hardware', etc. For me, this is such a nice, easy layout, a good completment to the Corona Virus Tech Handbook, which makes me think of what the internet was really meant for in the first place, gathering, sharing, and distributing knowledge.

Helpful Engineering is a group of 5000+ members of engineers, scientists and doctors around the world looking for ways to fight the virus. You can see their overview and list of projects here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cM87eJdXhP_8e9gJJZ_SnZXdo_huWsBmMzcqYWbhEOg/edit#heading=h.nxoemgv9fy73 and more about Helpful Engineering here: https://app.jogl.io/project/121#about

And finally, if you are interested in addressing one of the COVID-19 needs, check out this great resource from Health Tech Hub Copenhagen which lists the needs and is being updated: https://www.healthtechhub.org/covid-catalogue

Thoughts

So those are literally a 'few' of the many ongoing projects right now that are happening to help combat this virus. As many of us are simply trying to combat a new work-life situation of being at home with kids and pets and finding a rhythm or a place to sit and work, I want to take a moment to recognize everyone here. It is tough adapting to a new way of living and working and I'll discuss this in tomorrow's post. However, in today's post I want to just take a moment and recognize humanity. Just look at it. I've always been impressed by the maker and open source communities who work together to publish what they are working on. Thingiverse, if you haven't heard of it, is a wonderful place to find 3D models for printing, laser cut patterns, and much more. Github is where projects are stored, often with extensive, easy to follow documentation. Arduino, BeagleBone, Sparkfun, Adafruit, and so many others produce endless free tutorials based on their communities' contributions, people writing libraries for software and hardware, people making new ways of doing things and publishing these for free, for others. (Again, one of my favourite go-to communities is Hackaday). This is what makers do. Open-source things, hardware, software, documentation, projects, experience, expertise. And if you're trying to figure out how your business can use open source, check out this model by Danish Design Centre: https://danskdesigncenter.dk/en/remodel

And now, when we need it most, these communities are rising to the challenge. Don't get me wrong. I know MANY others are as well. A huge number of communication mediums have opened up their paid models to be free for remote work during this time, even genome sequencing is being offered for free. People are helping each other. Sharing knowledge. Diving the real from the fake. Working together to achieve goals that individual companies could not achieve on their own at this time because they are bypassing typical ways of working and communicating.

Our world is changing. Right in front of our eyes. The way people collaborate, the way science is done, the way we explore new technological possibilities, the way we contribute and find information. Interest groups are global and updating every second, not every week, or every month. What can we learn? Here's a few takeaways:

• Online collaboration tools are making it possible for hundreds and thousands of people to contribute, fact-check and co-create. Google Docs and Facebook Groups are the clear winners here, with Slack not far behind. What tools is your organization using? Does it still make sense? Is it what you've always used? Why? It might be for security issues, but when faced with at time like this - look at what is possible. See my next point.
• Look at the speed at which the Corona Virus Tech Handbook has been produced. It is baffling. For a public institution - or even a private company to produce something of this depth, with this many people weighing in, debating facts, updating, correcting and adding information, it is currently impossible for one organization to do this. But when released to the public, we have something so incredible. Maybe this is optimism. Of course, there's many people who would try to sabotage it, like they do with Wikipedia. And of course there are still many, many ignorant people out there (don't even get me started). But as it stands now, this is an incredible piece of documentation which is living and still growing and being edited every second.
• When called to action, makers answer. There are so many people out there, self-taught, or highly academically educated, who have been tinkering at home, learning to 3D print, learning to code, learning to build, to create, to make. They are ready, and they believe in open source projects. They believe in working together to achieve a common goal. In my work in industry, I have turned to the maker community Every. Single. Time. I have needed something important, innovative or creative to be made. I can always find someone, quickly who has thought of, or already made something which they are happy to share with me. Go meet them. They're easy to find, and if you need help finding them, ask me.
• On that note, let people play. There are many start-ups who do a 10 - 20% 'play day' in their work week where employees spend approximately 1 day per week, researching or working on whatever they want to help them grow. This is so vital - this is what results in the type of thinking we need right now. Consider implementing this at your company. Let people return to play. Let them open their minds, be creative, be unrestrained, and watch as innovation explodes in ways you could never imagine. I sound cheesy - I know, but I am 100% convinced this is the right way to go.
• And on that note, cross-disciplinary education is vital. We can't just talk about 3D printing, bio-hacking, laser cutting, digital fabrication, coding, etc. We need to try it. We need to get our hands on it. I recently did a workshop with an amazing group of women, where in our normal meet-ups we discuss new innovations in the world, but few of them had ever even touched a 3D printer or an Arduino board. We built robots, we coded them to move, we laser cut in wood and metal, we welded, we flew drones. They went home not just hearing about these technologies, but having played with them, having explored these worlds, and thus, having a better understanding of how they can use these technologies in their industries.

Thank you for reading along. These are my quick thoughts, and sometimes, they're too quick - but the world we live in this second is too quick. Everything is happening so fast, and I'm just in a state of shock and awe at the same time. I'm worried, but I'm hopeful. I'm impressed by people coming together to co-create solutions for us all. I'm grateful to the maker communities for their hard work, their ambition, and their ability to band together. I'm excited to see what amazing things emerge from the time crunch we're in, people are coming up with brilliant solutions, and the next step is implementation. How can we figure out what the good solutions are and implement them in time, when we're so used to taking 10+ years to develop a medical device? We're going to have to change the way we think, act, and re-act, starting right now.

Tomorrow, I'll jump into my own research, Meaningfulness, and how our very concept of work, life, balance, and values are changing. As always, feel free to write to me at [email protected].