Blog Posts

Summary of PubInvCon 2021: Work to Be Done

On January 9, 2021, Public Invention hosted our virtual “year in review” conference titled PubInvCon 2021: Work To Be Done. The conference was a coming together of dedicated inventors, volunteers, scientists, students, and more interested in humanitarian inventing “in the public, for the public.” We discussed our successes of 2020 and outlined the hard work

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Fraunhofer Institute & Public Invention

Recently, Public Invention President Robert L. Read and other volunteers assisted a project with students from Fraunhofer Institute. The Institute released a press release summarized here: In April, COVID-19 began straining healthcare systems as we saw supply-chain breakdowns leading to ventilator shortages. To help mitigate this, individuals, communities, companies, and research institutions began to design

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Our progress and plans: An open letter about the VentMon to donors and grantors

— Robert L. Read In June and July, Public Invention applied for and received two $20,000 grants, one from the Mozilla Open Source Software (MOSS) Foundation, and one from Protocol labs, specifically to develop, make, and give away free-of-charge, the “VentMon” tester for invasive and non-invasive ventilators. The MOSS foundation grant had stronger legal language

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Videos and Slides from Vent-Con QA Available Now!

Thank you to all our talented speakers and teams who presented at our virtual mini-con Vent-Con QA, where we discussed pandemic ventilators in the context of quality assurance and regulatory compliance. Each presenter provided a unique and important perspective, as we heard experts from diverse fields discuss medical, risk, design, and various other aspects of

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Public Invention Receives $20,000 Grant from Mozilla Open Source Support Foundation

We are pleased to thank the Mozilla Open Source Support Foundation for a generous grant of $20,000 specifically to make and give away the VentMon free-of-charge. The VentMon is one of our most active projects in the fight against COVID-19. The VentMon is a device for measuring pressure, flow, oxygen, temperature and humidity produced by

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Videos from Vent-Con 2020 Available Now!

The videos from Vent-Con 2020 are available now! On May 21st, Public Invention co-hosted Vent-Con 2020–an Open Source Ventilator Conference–along with Helpful Engineering, Make.co, and Ventilators Collaboration Network. The mini-conference/webinar reviewed the impressive progress, discussed the uncertain present, and forged a path forward into the future for makers, philanthropists, investors, government officials, medical professionals, and

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Public Invention Featured in Make: magazine

Public Invention was recently featured in an article in Make: magazine that highlights our ventilator project in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The article includes a video interview with President Robert L. Read and Public Invention collaborators Geoff Mulligan, Lauria Clarke, Juan E. Villacres Perez, and Avinash Baskaran, detailing our research and exploring the future

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We need a few good programmers…in C and JavaScript…

The VentMon project shows great promise in testing and monitoring emergency pandemic ventilators. I can’t keep up with all the features we need to add. We need some high-quality programming volunteered in C and JavaScript. Check out the descriptions and see if you are interested. Contact Robert L. Read for more information.

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Public Invention receives $20,000 grant from Protocol Labs for VentMon

Public Invention has received a $20,000 grant from Protocol Labs to build the VentMon, a tester/monitor for rapidly manufactured pandemic ventilators. The pandemic demands a simple device that can be plugged into an airway to test a ventilator. In the developing world, many ventilators are broken and need to be repaired; part of the repairing

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