McGill University, Montreal General Hospital Foundation and HeroX Crowdsource to Develop Affordable Ventilator and Save Lives

MONTREAL, July 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- McGill Engine, the Faculty of Engineering's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre at McGill University, in partnership with the Montreal General Hospital Foundation, today joined forces with HeroX, the leading crowdsourcing platform for global problem-solving, to launch the "Made for All" challenge. This is phase two of the Code Life Ventilator Challenge, which invited thousands of innovators to design an affordable ventilator. Now, the race is on to bring these ventilators to broad use as soon as possible so that developing countries have access to them before the second wave of COVID-19 hits.

"We had a tremendous response from our initial Code Life Ventilator Challenge, and we are eager to see the next phase unfold," said Dr. Reza Farivar, Canada Research Chair in Integrative Neuroscience at McGill University. "It's been inspiring to see how many people from all over the globe have wanted to contribute during this unprecedented moment in history.

"COVID-19 has shown us the importance of mobilizing solvers from around the world," said Christian Cotichini, CEO, HeroX. "Crowdsourcing allows us to aggregate top talent pretty quickly, and the need for cost-efficient ventilators remains absolutely urgent."

Ventilators are costly to develop, and currently, the cheapest on the market range from $5000-$10,000 per unit. These prices are cost-prohibitive in many developing countries, so the Made for All Challenge is urgently seeking the optimization of the innovative Finalist designs from the Code Life Ventilator Challenge. Backed by the power of HeroX's crowdsourcing platform, the Made for All Challenge will yield approved, low-cost manufacturing packages of the Code Life Ventilator Challenge Finalists, that will then be shared with producers worldwide to manufacture these innovative designs.

The Challenge: The Made for All Challenge will run in two phases: Team Formation and The Sprint. In the Team Formation phase, manufacturing and compliance experts will recruit (at a minimum) an industrial engineer, design engineer, medical device expert, technical writer, and a clinical respiratory expert to form a team. The Candidate team then will make their pitch to the Finalists of the Code Life Ventilator Challenge. They have to convince the Finalist team that they are best placed, most experienced, and most resourceful to be the Made for All team on their design. Each Finalist can only pick one Made for All Team. Once a Finalist has selected a partner team, they must race to be the first to obtain regulatory approval for their device, and make a final manufacturing package for the ventilator that would cost less than $1000 CAD per unit.

The Prize: McGill Engine, in collaboration with the Montreal General Hospital Foundation, is sponsoring the Made for All Challenge and will offer a single prize of up to $300,000 to the winner in exchange for the final manufacturing package and license to share it worldwide with competent manufacturers.

How to Become a Solver: To accept the challenge, visit www.herox.com/MadeforAll

ABOUT HEROX

HeroX is a social network for crowdsourcing innovation and human ingenuity, co-founded in 2013 by serial entrepreneur, Christian Cotichini, and XPRIZE Founder and Futurist, Peter Diamandis. HeroX offers a turnkey, easy-to-use platform that supports anyone, anywhere, to solve everyday business and world challenges using the power of the crowd.

Explore the latest challenges at www.herox.com

Media Contact:
Alexandra Pony
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SOURCE HeroX