Amid COVID-19, iFixit releases repair database for ventilators
The site posts more than 13,000 curated manuals, with the goal of helping people fix essential medical equipment.
iFixit has created a database of repair guides for medical equipment being used in the coronavirus pandemic.
iFixit, the website known for tearing apart devices and making tech repair guides, has released an extensive online repair resource for medical professionals. It hopes the guide will help keep hospital equipment working throughout the coronavirus pandemic, CEO Kyle Wiens said Tuesday.
"Hospitals are having trouble getting service information to fix medical equipment -- and it's not just a COVID-19 problem," Wiens said. We've heard countless stories from biomedical technicians (biomeds, for short) about how medical device manufacturers make their jobs more difficult by restricting access to repair information."
iFixit said it dedicated half its staff to building the medical equipment database over the last two months. The team's initial priority was on devices widely used to support COVID-19 patients, such as ventilators, anesthesia systems and respiratory analyzers.
With the help of more than 200 librarians and archivists, along with many biomeds, nurses and doctors from across the country, iFixit has archived over 13,000 manuals and organized them into nine dedicated sections for clinical, laboratory, medical support equipment and other medical supplies. The database is available to use now, through iFixit's Medical Device category.
iFixit is providing the database for free to the medical community. The company also welcomes manufacturers, biomeds and anyone with new repair information to contribute to the database.
