A team of UK scientists from three universities are developing a new smart testing device for Covid19. The device incorporates artificial intelligence, image processing, and molecular virology and allows to detect the virus in 30 minutes using a smartphone app.
The science used to develop the testing device has been evaluated in the Philippines to check chickens for viral infections. The team is adapting this science to detect Covid19 in humans.

The 26 physicists of the DarkSide experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, designed a new mechanical ventilator they hope to mass produce quickly and cheaply with off-the-shelf components.

The new design has been spearheaded by Cristiano Galbiati, a physicist at Princeton University in the US and the Gran Sasso lab. Galbiati said he started working on the design after speaking to a friend whose family made a contribution to an intensive care hospital being assembled on the site of Milan’s Expo in 2015.

Dhaval Trivedi designed a 3D printed toothbrush for ventilated patients to be used when disposable products are not available. Good oral care of ICU patients is linked to better survivorship and reduced ventilatory associated pneumonia.

Dhaval’s open-source design requires a 3D printed part and cotton gauze.

Czech women joined forces via social media to sew face masks at home to help combat the spread of Covid19.

The Facebook group “Czechia sews face masks” went viral after its launch on Sunday 15th March 2020, reaching 24,000 members in two days.

Dr Matthew Wettergreen and his team at the Rice Univeristy, in Texas, designed an automated bag valve mask in less than two weeks to tackle the needs emerging because of the Covid19 pandemic.

This automated bag valve mask device is meant to take less-critical patients off ventilators and free them up for those in more critical conditions.

Triage is an app developed by a South Korean team led by Dr JoonNyung Heo, with the aim of aiding the medical staff in the fight against Covid19.

Triage App, intended for the medical staff, aims at easing the triage for coronavirus infections by providing a simple interface for patient triage to collect information about patient's vitals, temperature, comorbidities etc. The app follows the 7th guideline of the South Korean Centre for Disease Control and Prevention so that the user will not need to memorize it.

Siddh Sanghvi, a seven-grade Indian student in the UAE used STEM technology to create a robot that dispenses sanitiser detecting a hand from a 30cm range.

He had the idea while after watching a video of people touching the hand sanitiser's bottle to clean their hands. By touching the bottle the risk of being infected with Covid19 are higher.

“So, I thought why not create something using the STEM technology, where the machine can dispense the sanitiser automatically, without bringing your hand in contact,” Siddh said.

In just one week, a team at Oxford University and King’s College London built a simple ventilator, the OxVent, that could help the fight against Covid19.

Dr Dusty Ruchardson, Dr Spencer Zaugg and Colton Zaugg created the Montana Mask to provide proper face masks to medical professionals working to fight the Covid19.

The Montana Mask is a 3D printable, highly efficient filtration mask that can be fitter to the provider’s face and sanitised between uses. The mask was not approved by the FDA or NIOSH but has been rigorously tested.

The level of protection is customizable, depending on which material you use for the filter.

The design files are free for public use.

Folding@home is a project that borrows your PC’s unused computing power to research treatments for the coronavirus. The system in place thanks to Folding@home has more computing power than the top 100 supercomputers combined.

It is capable of calculating 1,554 petaflops, making it about 10 times more powerful than Summit, the world’s fastest supercomputer.

A volunteer team called MIT E-Vent, composed of engineers, physicians, computer scientists and others, is working to develop a safe and inexpensive alternative to ventilators, for emergency use.

About a decade ago, some students from the Medical Device Design class, working in consultation with local physicians designed a simple ventilator with a budget of about $100. The device design and testing were detailed in a paper but never brought forward until now.

A research team from universities in two continents is racing to develop ‘do-it-yourself’ healthcare gear. The aim is to have gears that can be developed and assembled from components available at the local level.

“We’re trying to figure out how to get these things to scale in the time we have,” said Shannon Yee. She is an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, part of the team working on the ventilator issue.

Some residents of the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesvos created an awareness team in response to the increased sense of urgency about hygiene and handwashing, to help the 20,000 inhabitants of the camp during the COVID19 epidemic.

Because of the rapid spreading of the coronavirus infection, there is a worldwide shortage of personal protective gear. Usually, protective gears should be used one time only, but Erik is proposing a sterilization box to reuse the equipment until production steps up again.

The European Union recommends the use of UV-C light for sterilization. A sterilization box can be built at home for your protective gears and objects.

Yoav had an idea to save and reuse multi-purpose gloves, respirator masks and other protective items that have become very costly and hard to find.

Using empty cardboard boxes Yoav created a cluster of seven cubbies. Each cubby may include two hooks to allow for the hanging of mask, gloves and outside shirt for each day of the week. The idea is to label your item with the day of the week, use it and then place it in the designated cubby. After seven days, the person can start from the first set of items again. The time will give the pathogen enough time to perish.

A mask with two infrared detectors that detect temperature. The detectors are based on the Seed Studio Grove MLX90615 Digital Infrared Temperature Sensor.

The temperature data are shown through a Grove – OLED Display 1.12” V2.

The digital infrared temperature sensor above the mask can detect the self-body temperature in real time and show the temperature on OLED display.

Paolo developed a homemade protection mask because protection gears have become difficult to find in Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

His design is homemade and does not replace professional and certified products, it represents emergency protection when nothing better is available.

The necessary materials are:
- cotton fabric
- filter fabric
- soft plastic sheet
- sewing thread
- tetra pack caps or similar
- elastic tape
- cardboard for cutting patterns

The Pandemic Ventilator was built to be used as a ventilator of last resort during a possible avian flu pandemic. The inventor was motivated by the idea of someone he loves needing a ventilator in a moment of crisis.

The ventilator is very primitive and basic, but it has a modern electronic control system. This basic ventilator design is using materials that would still be available or that can be re-purposed during a pandemic.

King’s College London launched a COVID-19 symptom tracking app in the UK to allow daily self-report.

The app tracks in real-time the progress of the disease aiming at slowing the outbreak by helping researcher identify:
- How fast the virus is spreading in an area
- High-risk areas in the UK
- Who is most at risk, by better understanding symptoms

Based on a feasibility study published in 2016 in Academic Emergency Medicine, Dr. Charlene Irvin Babcock from Detroit Michigan shows how to modify one ventilator to ventilate two or four patients simultaneously to help the fight against Covid-19.

Using a t2 and four adaptors it is possible to have four ports that could be connected to the expiration tube or the inspiration cycle. In the video, Dr Babcock provides some recommendations for how to allocate the ventilators.