The FI5 pulmonary ventilator developed by Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow and the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in response to the Covid-19 pandemic is attracting interest from various parts of the world. It is an open source project, which means that it has an open patent, so that anyone can produce it. At the moment, there is particular interest from the Americas, currently the worst affected part of the world.
Awaiting certification. The first country to take up the opportunity presented by the FI5 was Mexico. Right from the day of the presentation, back on 13 May, several companies from the Latin America country downloaded the available information from the open source platform https://github.com/icub-tech-iit/ventilator-FI5. Three FI5 prototypes have already been produced in Mexico and are now being assessed in order to be certified as conforming to the standard required by the Ministry of Health. Once approved, mass production can begin and the devices can then be supplied to hospital emergency departments. In recent weeks, hundreds of people have fallen ill and the most acute cases are unable to breathe unaided.
Ceremony. The FI5 was officially presented at the Italian Consulate in Mexico City in the presence of representatives from both countries. Scuderia Ferrari and IIT expressed their willingness to cooperate with the Mexican firms and the Maranello company helped select some suppliers so as to speed up the entire production process and facilitate the device’s certification, while the Italian Institute of Technology has made some of its own engineers available to support the programme.