But he knew where to start: with the Open Air project, started by the Portuguese neuroscientist and philosopher João Nascimento, about which the LIP researcher had read in an Observer article. On March 11, João had suggested to the world through Twitter that the experts come together to create a new model of medical ventilator with an open source method. The appeal was well received and now brings together tens of thousands of researchers in one project. One of them is Paulo Fonte.
It was through this project that Paulo also joined doctors – Pedro Póvoa, director of the Intensive Care Unit at Hospital São Francisco Xavier; António Bugalho, pulmonologist at CUF Lisbon hospitals and professor at NOVA Medical School; and surgeon in the Portuguese Army. And to engineers – Américo Pereira, Luís Lopes, Orlando Cunha (LIP), Telmo G. Santos, Alberto Martinho, António Gabriel-Santos, José Paulo Santos, Luís Gil, Tiago Rodrigues, Valdemar Duarte, António Grilo, João Goês, João Martins , João Pedro Oliveira (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Gonçalo Pimenta (structural engineer) and Pedro Pinheiro de Sousa (Haas F1 Team).
Under the scope of the Open Air project, the team created a fan that is much simpler than the ones usually used in hospitals, made with common materials for the distribution of gas or water in our homes – objects that exist in any warehouse and that are not scarce . It is such a simple system, with materials so common, that not only can they be manufactured in record time in Portugal (until now, we really had to import them), but they are much cheaper. A traditional fan, made with materials certified by the health authorities, costs 25 thousand euros. It only needs a thousand to be produced.
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