NYC EDC & New Lab—
Emergency Bridge Ventilator
In March of 2020, as cases of COVID-19 continued to climb in NYC, we were invited to join a burgeoning team of engineers and physicians tasked with rapidly designing and producing a bridge ventilator to meet the growing demand before NYC hospitals ran out.
Based on an open-source design from MIT︎︎︎, we sought to design a device that was not only simple and intuitive to use, but also low-cost compared to traditional vents, easy to produce in a variety of manufacturing facilities and made out of as few parts as possible to avoid supply chain hurdles.
In April of that year, the device was granted an Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA.
Based on an open-source design from MIT︎︎︎, we sought to design a device that was not only simple and intuitive to use, but also low-cost compared to traditional vents, easy to produce in a variety of manufacturing facilities and made out of as few parts as possible to avoid supply chain hurdles.
In April of that year, the device was granted an Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA.
Role—
Design Director at 10XBeta
Design Director at 10XBeta
photograph by Gabby Jones
A massive, around-the-clock, multidisciplinary effort.
We worked closely with New Lab and Boyce Technologies to design, test and produce the first 3,000 units in under a month.
“This is a story about doing the impossible – so it’s a New York story. We’d never made a ventilator before – and so we made thousands. We learned it would take a year – and so we did it in a month. Our City is taking our future into our own hands. That’s how we’ll beat this crisis and prepare for the next.”
—NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio
“This is a story about doing the impossible – so it’s a New York story. We’d never made a ventilator before – and so we made thousands. We learned it would take a year – and so we did it in a month. Our City is taking our future into our own hands. That’s how we’ll beat this crisis and prepare for the next.”
—NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio
photograph by Gabby Jones
Awards
Fast Company Innovation by Design Award, General Excellence category, 2020
Fast Company Innovation by Design Award, Health category, 2020
Press
New York Times—
New York Needed Ventilators. So They Developed One in a Month︎︎︎
The New Yorker—
The Engineers Taking on the Ventilator Shortage︎︎︎
Fast Company—
How 3 companies joined forces to build the Spiro Wave ventilator in a month︎︎︎
Tech Crunch—
Spiro Wave emergency ventilator gains FDA authorization to address COVID-19 demand︎︎︎