Rhys Thomas, a consultant anaesthetist at Glangwili General Hospital, was “desperately concerned about the lack of intensive care unit (ICU) ventilators to deal with the inevitable pandemic“. He contacted a local engineering company and, in just three days, came up with the final version of a ventilation system they named “COVID Emergency Ventilator”.

COVID19+Eu is an independent platform created in Portugal with the aim of keeping the population informed, with practical solutions and recommendations. It is maintained by a team of over 40 experts, who share the information in a simple and clear manner, with no technical terms, but always based on official and reliable sources.

Colin Keogh, Conall Laverty and David Pollard created Open Source Ventilator (OSV) Ireland, a project focused on gathering volunteers to work on the development of a Field Emergency Ventilator. The group got together through a Facebook group dedicated to finding solutions for the severe lack of medical supplies that was being felt by healthcare services throughout the World, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare workers all over the world where working their hardest and making personal sacrifices in order to fight this disease. Many of these professionals had to leave their homes to temporarily relocate to areas where they were needed, and many others were concerned that they would infect their loved ones by going home.

Covidografia is a platform developed in Portugal that aims to “take a picture” of the symptoms of the citizens. The platform was developed by volunteers connected throught the Tech4Covid19 project – a tech community that aims to create solution to fight Covid-19.

Covidografia asks their users to log-in to the platform and share some basic personal information (date of birth and post-code) as well as their health status (symptoms and whether they are or have been infected with the new coronavirus). The user should then keep updating the app whenever their symptoms change.

Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer, two journalists at The Atlantic, were concerned about the lack of data available about the situation on the coronavirus pandemic in the USA. They felt they had to do something to help people understand what was actually happening.

The two started reaching out to health officials in all fifty states and gathered all the data they could on how many people where being tested. Their investigation resulted on a joint article that detailed how the process of testing was being carried out in the USA.

A team at the University of Minnesota is working on a simple and inexpensive mechanical ventilator that is the size of a cereal box – the Coventor. The objective is that the device can be produced quickly and “allows those patients who would otherwise not have an opportunity to survive, to survive. It gives people a chance.”, said Dr. Stephen Richardson. Richard created the first homemade version of the device, after hearing about the potential worldwide shortage of ventilators caused by Covid19. He then quickly assemble a team to work on the finished product.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Terence Lester was paying attention to the news and the health and safety measures suggested by health authorities and he started to worry about a vulnerable part of the population: the homeless. "All the news reports are saying wash your hands, but the homeless population often can't."

During the Covid-19 outbreak, Wyn Griffiths’ wife went to the hospital and realized that, despite being careful to frequently wash her hands, there was no way to avoid touching door handles. Realizing that door handles are a potential vehicle of infection, Griffiths came up with a solution and designed a hands-free door handle, that allows people to open doors using only their arms.

The design is universal and can be easily attached to any existing door handle. The file for printing this device are available online and can be downloaded for free.

For Christian de Weck it all started when he saw on the news that Mass General Hospital was experiencing a severe shortage of masks, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and asked the help of everyone that had 3D printers available. Ever since he was young, Christian carries around with him a notebook to write down inventions he comes up with. So he wasted no time and immediately jumped at this opportunity to make a difference, designing and printing masks from his family's dining room.

OxyGEN is an open hardware prototype that has been collaboratively developed by a group of engineers based in Barcelona.

Lee Jun-young was living in South Korea during the Covid-19 pandemic and, while trying to keep up with the news, he found the data provided by the government hard to understand.

The date released by the health officials contained information about the locations where coronavirus patients had been, but it wasn’t very visual. So, Lee ”thought it would be nice to mark them on a map," and. decided to use his skill as a former Android software engineer, developing Corona Map.

Students from an elementary school in southern Taiwan came up with an innovative way to encourage kids to wash their hands and fight the spread of the new coronavirus. They created a Lego robot that automatically dispenses an amount of hand sanitizer, so students can sterilize their hands without having to touch the bottle, lowering the risk of infection.

Christian Fracassi and Alessandro Romano are a team of young Italian engineers that work for a company that specializes in 3D printing. During the Covid-19 pandemic they started printing ventilator valves for hospitas that were running out of that equipment. During that process, they were contacted by Dr. Renato Favero, former head physician of the Gardone Valtrompia Hospital, how shared with them another ideia: the construction of an emergency ventilator mask, designed by adjusting a snorkeling mask already available on the market.

Christian Fracassi and Alessandro Romaioli are a team of young Italian engineers that work for a company that specializes in 3D printing. They were living in a country severely affected by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. “A few of our friends are hospitalized from the coronavirus, with many more in quarantine at home. Hundreds of people have died here.”

SOS Vizinho is a Portuguese project that has gathered more than 70 specialists in the effort to create a support network for risk groups currently in social isolation. The project was created after Henrique Paranhos shared this ideia on his social media networks and received an overwhelming wave of support from people wanting to be a part of the project. The objective is to help signal the groups/patients at risk in each region and create a distribution network through volunteers.

João Nascimento, a Portuguese Neurosciences and Philosophy student at Harvard University, was paying close attention to the news reports about the spread of the new strain of coronavirus responsible for the Covid-19 disease. João noticed that one of the biggest problems was the lack of ventilators available to treat every patient that would need them.