Advocates of the Right to Repair movement are asking ventilator manufacturers to make their repair manuals, software updates, and schematics available to HTM professionals amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

They also believe these releases should be mandated in legislation. “We know they break,” Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of The Repair Association, said of ventilators. To be sure Gordon-Byrne isn’t suggesting that ventilators are constantly failing. Like other medical devices, they are designed for reliability. But like any machine, they can have failures after continuous use. And they require upkeep.

Currently, many of the major ventilator makers take a proprietary approach toward the material or guides for repair and maintenance. And major ventilators makers have repair and maintenance contracts.

Read the full article at Chron.com.