COVID-19 is spiking in cities like Houston, which means ventilators are needed more than ever. Fortunately, necessity is the mother of invention—an adage that certainly rings true in the case of the CoVent-19 Challenge.
And it’s at this very moment that the CoVent-19 Challenge—a contest started by Massachusetts General Hospital to develop a rapidly manufacturable ventilator—has announced its winner. Of 200 submissions, a team of alumni, staff, and faculty from Smith College has taken the top prize with a design called SmithVent, edging out another design proposed by the lauded design firm Fuseproject. The SmithVent costs a tenth of the price of a normal ventilator, and the plans are being distributed open source for anyone to use or refine.
“We never came into this with the goal of creating a company,” says Susannah Howe, design clinic director and sophomore class dean at Smith College.
Read the full article on Fast Company.
