How 3 companies joined forces to build the Spiro Wave ventilator in a month

In early March, as the coronavirus was spreading around the world but before it had fully taken hold in the United States, the shortage of ICU ventilators was already becoming a crisis.

Italian hospitals had issued guidelines for rationing ventilators, and experts were concerned that the U.S. stock could quickly be depleted if cases rose at the same rate that they were around the world.

In the midst of the uncertainty and growing panic, a group of entrepreneurs, engineers, and executives teamed up to work on an emergency bridge ventilator. Called the Spiro Wave, the resulting device was developed in under a month, even as New York locked down and supply chains faltered. At the end of that intense push, the group had FDA Emergency Use Authorization and a purchase order from New York City for 3,000 ventilators for the city’s stockpile.

The effort was spearheaded by three New York-based companies: Newlab, a collaborative work space and innovation lab; 10XBeta, a product development firm; and Boyce Technologies, a manufacturing facility in Long Island City. It’s just one example of the many ways that groups around the world worked to create makeshift medical devices in a time of crisis. Major companies like GM and Ford were tapped to create thousands of critical care ventilators; meanwhile projects like the Spiro Wave were meant as emergency ventilators that could “bridge” the gap until other ventilators were available. Here’s an inside look at the collaboration and innovation that transpired to create the Spiro Wave.

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