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Medical Device Company’s Israel Division to Provide Ventilator Blueprints for Free

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April 1, 2020
NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 01: Ambulance drivers walk with a gurney outside of Mount Sinai Hospital which has seen an upsurge of coronavirus patients on April 01, 2020 in New York City, United States. Hospitals in New York City, which has been especially hard hit by the coronavirus, are facing shortages of beds, ventilators and protective equipment for medical staff. Currently, over 75, 000 New Yorkers have tested positive for COVID-19 (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The Israel division of the medical device company Medtronic will provide the blueprints for its ventilators for free to companies seeking to manufacture them.

Yaron Yitzhari, the CEO of Medtronic’s Israel division, made the announcement to Israeli media network Arutz Sheva on April 1.

“Our goal is to prolong lives — to save lives, in fact,” Yitzhari said. “This is what’s needed right now, in the emergency situation we’re in, and this consideration comes before everything else.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a global “demand for literally hundreds of thousands of machines, when global production usually runs to maybe a few thousand a month,” he said, adding that Medtronic already has doubled its ventilator production and is aiming to triple it in the coming weeks.

Yitzhari said that he didn’t think his decision would negatively impact the firm’s profit margin.

“Our company manufacturers thousands of products,” he said. “Ventilators are just one of those products, and this is an emergency situation. We have many other products that we sell for profit.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center tweeted, “G-d bless Israel’s Medtronic and its CEO Yaron Yitzhari for releasing its patents and sharing the know-how for its ventilators to help save countless lives worldwide!”

According to TechCrunch, Medtronic announced on March 30 it is releasing the design specifications of its Puritan Bennett (PB) 560 portable ventilator to help meet the global demand for ventilators.

Additionally on April 1, a team of more than 40 Israeli volunteers of various physicians, engineers and students released their blueprints for ventilators made from off-the-shelf components under the name AmboVent.

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