“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
COSMIC Co-Leads
Dr. Chris Nguan (MD)
Dr. Nguan is a surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital and has been involved in planning our local response to the COVID-19. He is also the director of the Surgical Technologies Experimental Laboratory and Advanced Robotics (STELLAR) facility.
Alexander Waslen
Alexander is a 4th year mechanical engineering student specializing in mechatronics at UBC. He is interested in the intersection between engineering and medicine and how advancements in technology can improve healthcare outcomes.
Dr. Philip Edgcumbe (BASc)
Philip is medical student (UBC MDPhD 2020), an entrepreneur, a biomedical engineer, and a Singularity University Canada faculty member. He speaks internationally on the topics of disruptive technology and the future of healthcare.
Brad Bycraft
Brad is an entrepreneur and engineer. He bring industry knowledge to COSMIC as he has worked on four different medical devices and built companies from the ground up. He is passionate about saving lives and bringing new technology to market.
Teams
Strategy
Team Strategy is responsible for the long term vision, mission and plan of COSMIC Medical. It also approves the overall budget.
Lead: Philip Edgcumbe & Patrick Wilkie
Members: Reid Robinson, Ron Mackinnon, Chris Nguan, Stanley Lee, Drew Phillips, Kristina Jobin
Clinical Needs
Team Clinical Needs determines need, clinical requirements and specifications for the ventilators and other respiratory support equipment.
Leads: Tyler Yan and Michael Lee
Members: Colin Davey, Lauren Barnett, Erica Ma, Brad Bycraft, Chanelle Chow
Regulatory and Legal
Team Regulatory and Legal is responsible for the regulatory and legal strategy of COSMIC Medical. It also oversees our Health Canada submissions and develops strategies for minimizing liability associated with open-sourcing designs.
Lead: Geoff Ching
Members: Patrick Wilkie, Rocky Kim, Charlene Tsai
Research
Team Research is responsible for monitoring local and global efforts to respond to the COVID crisis that relate to our initiativies. It tracks and shares information from other open source projects with our project members.
Lead: VACANT
Members: Caitlin Schneider, Stanley Lee, Patrick Wilkie, Alexander Waslen
PR/Fundraising
Team PR/Fundraising is responsible for raising awareness about the mission and progress of COSMIC with the local community as well as raising funds to support the COSMIC Medical initiative. It oversees our website and social media presence.
Lead: Stanley Lee
Members: Solenne Le Billon, Louise Chen, Kristina Jobin, Pamela Smith, Catherine Widjaja, Long Tran, Jason Lam, Andrea Law, Hannah Yang, Claire Anthony
Operations/Finance
Team Operations/Finance is in charge of making sure human capital is being allocated and expended efficiently, as well managing funds raised by PR/Fundraising.
Lead: Kristina Jobin
Members: Ryan Yan, Philip Edgcumbe, Jason Lam, Jackson Dagger, Andrea Law
Biomedical Engineering Projects
Mechanical Ventilation with Bag Valve Mask
Design a low-cost (<$500) ventilator based on squeezing a bag valve mask. Leverage existing global efforts with a focus on Lower Mainland supply chain.
For more information, please see the BVM Mechanical Squeeze Project presentation.
Lead: Alex Waslen and Kyle Kallin
Ryan Yan, Arito Wada, Connor Schellenberg, Melissa Coleman
Control Systems
Design a feedback and control system usable for different types of ventilators, capable of sensing inspiratory and expiratory pressures and controlling the ventilator actuators.
Lead: Jonah Shapiro and Patrick Wilkie
Atahan Akar, Colin Davey, Dvir Hilu, Glenn Battersby, Jake Cronin, Jonah Shapiro, Kota Chang, Patrick Wilkie, Tyler Yan
Gravity Ventilation (gVent)
A unique, air pressure and gravity driven ventilator. Advantages include the ability to deliver a constant pressure, with built in pressure relief.
For more information, please see the gVent page and our project presentation.
Lead: Alex Waslen
Atahan Akar, Colin Davey, Dvir Hilu, Glenn Battersby, Jake Cronin, Jonah Shapiro, Kota Chang, Patrick Wilkie, Tyler Yan
Snorkel Mask
Provider snorkel mask (PPE): to adapt a snorkel mask by attaching a filter in order for these masks to be used by providers in the face of shortage of N95 respirators and face shields.
Patient snorkel mask: to be used in COVID-19 patients requiring non-invasive ventilatory support (high flow oxygen, CPAP, BiPAP) while mitigating the risk of virus aerosolization.
For more information, please see the Snorkel Mask Project presentation.
Lead: Kate Koh
Ryan Yan, Louise Chen, Colleen Ogilvie, Ivan Gourlay, Sarah Bornais, Wan Yi Koh, Jade Varelle, Kenny Le, Justin Chan, Kiran Rikhraj
Bubble Helmet for 100% FiO2 without Aerosolization Risk
One primary challenge that hospitals face is that they are unable to treat even mild-moderate status patients with non-invasive ventilation (NIV) methods safely as they pose the risk of aerosolization, thus spreading the virus. Thus, we are developing a helmet-based NIV method that can address the weaknesses of other non-invasive ventilation methods.
For more information, please see the Bubble Helmet Project presentation.
Leads: Sabian Chiu, Amy Wu & Vionarica Gusti
Chanelle Chow, Arpan Grover, Zachary Huser, Mahsa Kohansal, Ryan Lee, Jun Lim, Eric Lyall, Erica Ma, Abhijit Pandhari, Mattias Park, Harrison Phillips, Faisal Shahril, Ella Sit, Kevin Su, Dan Dreiger, Tim Henthorne, Dr. Mark Johnson, Dr. Neilson McLean, Matthew Pope, Juan Rodriguez, Dr. Ivan Scrooby, Dr. Avinash Sinha, Bruce Wong, Dr. Yair Linn
Clinical Respiratory Support
The Emergency Air Management System (EAMS) supply unit will provide a pressurized air manifold and a vacuum manifold for a large number of COVID-19 patients in temporary field hospitals. The system is designed to be constructed with readily available construction materials. It will provide patients with respiratory support that would be equivalent to what they would normally get via the use of CPAP and BIPAP. It provides an additional advantage beyond CPAP and BIPAP because it extracts COVID-19 contaminated aerosolized particles and thereby reduces the risk of infection to the medical staff. The exhaust extraction process of the EAMS is likely more efficacious than even CPAP and BIPAP machines that have been augmented with HEPA filters.
For more information, please see the Respiratory Clinical Support Project presentation.
Leads: Tyler Yan and Michael Lee
Colin Davey, Lauren Barnett, Erica Ma, Chanelle Chow, Komal Fatima
Fluidic BiPAP
A BIPAP breathing system is helpful to patients who are able to breath spontaneously at a self-controlled rate, but whose overall pulmonary function is deficient. Most BIPAP devices are expensive and are in short supply. A fluidic valve can be used to provide a BIPAP system but those developed to date require a relative high pressure of compressed air, which can be difficult to obtain. We are developing a low pressure fluidic BIPAP valve that can be used with COSMIC Medical's Clinical Respiratory System to provide this breathing assistance at low cost and outside of a hospital environment.
Lead: Dan Andrews
Bruce Woodburn, Brian MacMillan, Daniel Driedger, Danil Stoyak, David Kim, James Matthews, Kenny Le, Sabian Chiu
Do you think you can help us succeed in our mission of creating abundant access to medical equipment in BC and around the world through open source design solutions? Please visit the Join COSMIC page to learn more!
“The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. There is a severe global shortage of medical supplies and equipment to fight the pandemic, including ventilators and respiratory equipment. As countries around the world grapple with this pandemic, the demand for critical supplies like test kits, ventilators and personal protective equipment is going up.
How well Canada comes through the COVID-19 pandemic will depend crucially on its supply of ventilators, the complex medical devices that are used to keep patients’ lungs supplied with oxygen when they are unable to breathe on their own.
Many of those most severely afflicted by COVID-19 require a ventilator to survive long enough to fight off the viral infection. A shortage of the devices would put Canadian doctors in the position of deciding who to save, a situation that has already occurred in Italy and elsewhere. Uncertainties around how the virus is spreading in Canada and the effectiveness of social-distancing measures currently in effect means it is not yet possible to know if the country will have enough ventilators throughout the course of the pandemic.
Over one month ago, Dr. Christopher Nguan, an Associate Professor at UBC – Department of Urological Sciences, Surgical Head of Kidney Transplantation at Vancouver General Hospital and the Director of the Surgical Technologies Experimental Laboratory & Advanced Robotics (STELLAR) facility at VGH decided action was needed. Dr. Nguan reached out to a core group of researchers and students to see if they would be interested in working on a project to address the urgent issue. He teamed up with Philip Edgcumbe, a UBC medical student, and Alex Waslen, a UBC engineering student, to launch the UBC Sprint Open Source Emergency Ventilator Project (UBC SOS eVent). Soon after, the vision for UBC SOS eVent became clear and the group was reorganized into the Collective Open Source Medical Innovations for COVID-19 (COSMIC).
The COSMIC team is preparing for the worst-case COVID-19 scenario, and the team’s mission is to build low-cost (<$500) ventilators* and other respiratory support equipment for use within the BC, Canadian and global overcapacity and under resourced healthcare systems globally.
What began as an intimate, informal group of less than half a dozen people has turned into a team of 100+ volunteer doctors, medical students, engineers, designers, and other like minded contributors. The teams quickly got to work on an emergency ventilator, respiratory equipment and personal protective equipment projects. Functioning prototypes have been designed and built for all projects. Those designs are now going through rigorous testing with an intent on Health Canada regulatory approval and plan for immediate large-scale manufacturing.
The intense creative cauldron which is the COSMIC team has generated entirely novel ideas about designs for devices and systems, some of which are evolutions of existing designs, and revolutionary in others. The gVent portable, pneumatic, gravity powered ventilator is a prime example of collaborative innovation in the development of an entirely novel type of low cost ventilator. The group continues this process of agile and rapid development of solutions for patients and providers with the vision of a common goal; make a difference against COVID-19.