Open Source Medical Supplies

A repository of open source plans for medical supplies that can be made anywhere in the world out of local materials, to enable resilient local response to pandemics

COVID-19 has proven to be both the greatest public health challenge, and the greatest logistical challenge, of the modern era. This exponentially-spreading disease hospitalizes 15-20% of infected patients for weeks at a time, during which hundreds of gloves, masks, face shields, and other medical supply items and pieces of equipment are used to treat every patient. This incredible demand for supplies, combined with a crippled global logistical infrastructure due to the pandemic itself, threatens to leave the entire world short on the medical supplies needed to properly treat the disease.

In light of this global supply chain failure, Open Source Medical Supplies (OSMS) was formed to research and disseminate open source plans for medical supplies used to treat COVID-19 that can be fabricated locally. Additionally, Open Source Medical Supplies supports, mentors and guides local communities as they self-organize hospital systems, essential services, professional fabricators, makerspaces, and local governments into resilient, self-supporting supply units.

In its first two weeks of operation, Open Source Medical Supplies helped organize 62,000 people all over the world in its Facebook group, supplied plans that volunteers turned into 280,000 medical supply items all over the world, produced an 80+ page long Open Source Medical Supply Guide for COVID-19, and released a Local Response Guide that helped local organizers form 95 local chapters globally.

Open Source Medical Supplies teamed up with RESOLVE, Toyota Research Institute, and private donors to stand up a full-time team to help lead a global, distributed manufacturing response to COVID-19. OSMS collaborates with hospitals, non-profit institutions, governments, professional fabricators and makerspaces all over the world to help direct local fabrication response.

Recent Media Coverage

"D.I.Y. Coronavirus Solutions Are Gaining Steam." New York Times, March 31, 2020.
"'This Is Truly a Last Resort.' Makers are 3D Printing Ventilator Parts and Sewing Masks Amid a Critical Shortage in Medical Supplies." Time, April 1, 2020.
"Robotics engineer crowd-sources designs for COVID-19 medical supplies to help out-of-stock hospitals." CBC, March 20, 2020.
"The Futuristic Solutions The Internet Is Crowdsourcing To Cure Coronavirus." Newsweek, March 18, 2020.

Summary Points

COVID-19 causes both fast-spreading, widespread illness and simultaneous supply chain failure as localities are forced to shut down operations and quarantine themselves. Due to the multi-week treatment of COVID-19, exponentially increasing infection rates, and simultaneous global nature of the pandemic, the medical supply chain is failing across the board. When hospitals can't get the supplies they need to treat the multi-week illness, localities experience significantly increased mortality (>10%) rates.
Many parts of the world do not have the medical supplies they need to combat this epidemic; nor do they have the resources necessary to purchase supplies while competing with exponentially increasing global medical supply demand.
Open Source Medical Supplies was founded to understand COVID-19's treatment, identify all the medical supplies involved, find or help design open source medical supply plans that meet the standards of those health supplies, medically review and publish those plans, and help communities self-organize to locally produce necessary medical supplies for their hospitals, secondary care facilities, and essential services.
Open Source Medical Supplies joined with RESOLVE to amplify its message globally, and partnered with Toyota Research Institute, private donors, non-profit institutions, and government institutions to enable local communities to support themselves through the COVID-19 pandemic if necessary.