Open Spirometry Network

This week BMC Pulmonary Medicine published an important article highlighting lack of access to spirometers in Nigeria.
In the survey of more than 300 hospital-based physicians, only one quarter of the surveyed physicians report access to a spirometer; in addition, physicians also highlighted their lack of training in use and interpretation of spirometry.
While the authors suggest [...]

Aside from working with the PIC microcontroller this past week, we have tried to manufacture a prototype based on our Fleisch spirometer design.
As noted in the previous post, we have been having difficulty cutting the polycarbonate capillaries due to their tendency to fuse together from the heat generated during the cutting process. This week, we [...]

Although our “cocktail straw” Fleisch spirometer was a large design advancement, the internal diameter of the straws was not small enough to achieve laminar flow through the capillaries. After some fluid mechanics calculations, we discovered that the inner diameter of the capillaries will have to be <1.2 mm to produce laminar flow through our spirometer.
We [...]

Peter Semmelhack, of Bug Labs, has followed up his great post on open hardware in health care, by announcing a plan to build an open source low-blood-sugar monitoring device for diabetics.
Peter and Bug Labs have been a continual source of inspiration to me and I’m very much looking forward to watching this new project [...]

Yesterday, Pop!Tech posted my article on open hardware in global health and what lessons we can learn from Open Spirometry so far that might help us build better, more successful projects.

After a variety of tests, the Fleisch-type spirometer proved to be the best for our spirometer design. The rough prototype that we tested has been refined, and a new and improved Fleisch spirometer was built. See the new pictures below, and click here to see the design dimensions.

Please click the link to find our OpenSpirometry_software_specification.
We would like to send this document to a software developer who could help us begin to code it. This document is only the first draft, and any input would be appreciated and would result in better software being produced.  Please comment if you have any suggestions, or [...]

Design Updates

We revised our design from the Venturi design, and we now need to decide whether to build a Lilly or Fleisch type spirometer. Both are currently used in commercial models. We are examining the pros and cons of each design and hope to have a basic prototype of each built by the end of [...]

I just took a minute to read through the Wikipedia page on spirometry. It needs some attention and references, if anyone has spare time to contribute.
Of course, please don’t forget to add to our wiki as well.

Wired has a pair of new articles online surveying the future of open source. Of interest to the open hardware community is Ryan Paul’s review of the expanding role of open-source in hardware projects, including Bug Labs and OpenMoko.