The May Roundup
Things were a brewin’ this week, and we are so excited for what this volunteer team has accomplished and is continuing to work toward. Here’s a little run-down of some things in the last week and the weeks ahead.
MAKING STUFF:
Face Shields: We’ve delivered 25,000 face shields to 175 destinations in Northern California, and sent over 1000 out of state. Plus, we contributed to another 1.05 million through Boston Scientific, an incredible effort to close the gap! We’re ramping down this operation as the need has shifted. Assembling and delivering these face shields would not have been possible without your help and the help of over 200 volunteers who contributed countless hours iterating, cutting, assembling, calling, and driving. We are immensely grateful for this community wide effort.
Intubation Boxes: We have shipped our boxes to Minnesota, Colorado and the Navajo Nation. The designs look fantastic, they’re off in the wild, and we’ll be submitting the designs to OSMS (Open Source Medical Supply) this week for public use. Looking at what’s out there, the puzzle-piece flat-packing as well as the flexible entries are large gifts to the pool of thought.
Impermeable Gowns: Two fabricators are ramping up cuts of our current gown design from after testing with several hospitals. We’re aiming for a run of 10,000 of these, starting this week and have had incredible help to scale up with larger factories.
PAPR Shields: We have a crew working out of The Ruby in the mission, making hundreds of PAPR shields every day. We’re starting delivery across the country, and have created a survey to hospitals in the areas with rising rates to help assess future needs.
Ventilator Parts: The team has found a FDA-certified 3D printer to print 100 Vent breathing circuit “Y”’s for Kaiser Oakland.
Custom PAPRs: Our insanely creative design team is hard at work figuring out an independent unit, and brainstorming next steps for design and production.
PAPR/CAPR Repair: The Nerd Squad (as we’ve dubbed our traveling crew of engineering elves) have been going into hospitals and fixing up helmets left and right, learning how to hack new parts every time.
Distributing like Bosses: A grant we received from GetUsPPE has allowed us to start sending PAPR shields all over the country to places that are underserved and overwhelmed by the effects of COVID.
Upcoming: We’re working on masks for hearing impaired who need to read lips as well as building sneeze guards for small businesses opening up to protect their employees.
AND BEHIND THE SCENES:
Beyond the heroes making and delivering, we have a complete volunteer staff behind the scenes, working the books, invoicing, admin-ing and making sure we can buy materials, reimburse drivers and, heck, stay afloat! Looks like we’re financially solvent for at least a little while longer.
Sam and Eda, who basically run this show behind the scenes joined Maker Faire for a panel “One Million Face Shields to Fight Covid19” last weekend. Check it out here.
We have a crew of drivers all over the Bay Area for one last week before they head out from Stanford. This crew has driven over 14,000 miles to distribute over the past few months. For those of you keeping track at home, that would be the distance of 5 drives from LA to NYC, or 1.7 times the DIAMETER OF THE EARTH!
Our grants team has earned us grants from the Kan Family Foundation, the Tableau Foundation, and GetUsPPE in the past two weeks. In addition to continued support from a number of local Rotary Clubs and the incredible generosity of individual donors through our GoFundMe.
We’ve been prepping our files for submission to NIH + OSMS for use by anyone who wants them. This is a major piece of our ongoing contribution to the movement and we’re excited to get these designs further afield!
