As the coronavirus crisis accelerates, hardware experts and enthusiasts around the world are hearing the call of duty. They are responding one social media post at a time. “I saw an Instagram post from a friend in Barcelona,” says Martin Serey, co-founder of Pomo, a medical equipment start-up in Chile. “I woke up one day feeling we had the same problem here, as coronavirus cases will ramp up quickly.” In response, Serey’s company stopped their development of a prosthetic aid for stroke patients and started to think about how to do a ventilator.

There are not enough ventilators available in hospitals right now for all of the potential patients who will be struck by the virus. An influential report from Imperial College London estimates that 30% of Covid-19 hospitalised patients are likely to require mechanical ventilation. The only way to avoid overwhelming intensive care units, it says, is with a mandatory lockdown that reduces social contact by 75%.

But some countries have been slow to act accordingly – and it is still uncertain that we can sustain extended isolation measures over the “several months” they may be needed. As a result, a ventilator shortage remains imminent in many parts of the world, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plea for 30,000 units shows.

In terms of their core function, ventilators are not extraordinarily complicated machines. Basically, they are sophisticated pumps – they control the oxygen and air flow from the patient’s lungs, supporting them while they cannot do their work.