MedPrint.org

The crisis is leading to bottlenecks for the products needed by doctors and system relevant personnel, we´ll provide a template for a plattform to "order" these from private or industrial 3D-printers

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find our prototype at http://frontend.medprint.org/

Inspiration - Crowdsourced Supplies for Hospitals

Due to the CoViD19 Pandemic, there is a scarcity or even non-availbility of urgently needed medical and protective equipment. Health and safety of medical professionals and patients is put at immediate risk. At the same time, many people- among them designers, makers and logistical professionals- are volunteering to help and support those heroes fighting CoViD19 at the front line by producing urgently needed supplies (e.g. with 3D Printers). In the past view weeks, all over the world, many grass-roots initiatives where founded to adress the shortage of supplies and help in this ongoing crisis. Many of those initiatives are facing similar problems, namely to provide an easy to use interface for the medical professionals to order equipment or to have good quality and standard designs to use.

MedPrint is here to solve this problem. We are developing an easy to use, easy to deploy, adaptable open-source platform that can be used by local grass-roots initiatives to manage their workflow and provide a design database that they can use.

Added value of using MedPrint:

  • Become a one-stop solution for ordering, local production and delivery of medical and protective equipment
  • Central database for known good open-source designs for the medical sector
  • Easy to scale out when companies with larger production capabilities join the local community
  • Enables collaborative engineering
  • Allows to share designs over all instances of MedPrint globally

Developments so far

The minimum valuable prototype of the Medprint.org platform is around 90% done, we are planning to finish it in the next weeks and will be ready for productive deployment very soon.

We also were able to connect and network with some other projects:

  • Print2Protect (Germany): We joined forces during the #WirVsVirus hackathon.
  • MakersVsVirus (Germany): We are co-operating with MakersVsVirus and share our network with them.
  • KapaMonitor (Germany): We are co-ordinating our efforts and are talking about the potential for future collaboration.
  • 3DToMeds (Switzerland): 3DToMeds joined MedPrint after their own project did not progress fast enough.
  • 3DIntorno (Italy): We are co-ordinating our efforts and are talking about the potential to deploy MedPrint in Italy.

In greater detail: How does MedPrint work?

The open source technology stack consists of

  • Django Frontend with a Python framework that allows for sophisticated dataprocessing
  • Gitlab backend to enable collaborative engineering and allows for support version and variant management
  • Docker containers that are easily deployable.

The MedPrint platform allows medical institutions, supporting makers and logistic providers to connect and coordinates the entire process for a supply with crowdsourced components. The platform aims to provide a standardised workflow for the ordering, manufacturing and delivery workflow. MedPrint also aggregates known good open-source designs that are dealing with the CoViD19 pandemic requests in order to allow local communitites to start producing equipment immediately. The MedPrint platofrm furthermore allows collaborative engineering of the designs by using a version control system.

After the Crisis- an adaptable and extendable plaform

Strictly an open-source platform, we have put an emphasis on making this platform valuable beyond the current crisis. It is adaptable and extendable to support organisations in other circumstances that ask for bringing together people in a collaborative engineering environment, such as disaster relief, development aid or others. Furthermore, it can be deployed globally to adapt to local requirements. Lastly, it can be also used in a commercial environment,e.g. to create a "on demand" hub e.g. for 3D printing or other additive manufacturing services.

Challenges so far

Coordination of more than 100 enthusiasts that have beeen supporting MedPrint throughout this journey and going forward has been going surprisingly productive, even with (exclusively digital and remote) communication being a bit chaotic at times. In times when people are contributing to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2, digital communication platforms and their reliability and quality are becoming more and more crucial.

What we learnt so far

Its incredible what people can achieve in only a short time! Its breathtaking how much motivation, interest and productive energy has combined out of solidarity and willingness to help and work together on solutions for those current urgent problems on the medical front. We are overwhelmed by the support we have received and are still receiving from all sides and would like to take this opportunity to thank all our current supporters from the bottom of our hearts!

Right now, we have just started- but you can catch a first glimpse of our platform! Please visit Medprint.org and let us know what you think of our prototype. Our open-source-code can be found at gitlab.com/medrprint.

What's next

We are still looking for more programmers (Python,Django, Bootstrap) to support the further development (see below, how we work and how to join).

The project has also been selected to participate in the prestigious "Solution Enabler" programme that the German government has set up to support promising initiatives agains CoVid 19 in Germany.

The momentum gained by those initial partnership is motivating us and makes us optimistic to be able to actively build further partnerships.

Further steps we are working on:

  • Cooperation with more local initiatives
  • Continued platform development
  • Implement a sustainability concept and (non-profit) financing model
  • Clarify legal questions (Organisation form, liability / certifications, Ownership, Copyright)
  • Organisation of available human resources as optimally as possible

Want to support us?

  • You are a software developer, preferably Python/Django or Bootstrap
  • Yo are a maker who designs 3D parts and want to publish them on a central repository
  • You are running a local community of makers and need a tool to ease your work
  • You or your company is looking to fund CoViD19 related grass-roots initiatives

**Please contact info@medprint.org

How are we organised?

We are organised in 4 teams to work efficiently on the challenges of our project:

  • Concept team: working on the general idea, business models and structuring collaboration within the teams
  • Platform team: has implemented the prototype currently deployed at http://frontend.medprint.org
  • Construction and Design team: Designing equipment and reviewing puclicly available designs
  • Outreach and Networking team: Connecting MedPrint with other projects, find funding partners, approach local communities

Tools used for coordination are amongst others: Discord, Google Suite and Slack. For development we are using Gitlab, our source code can be downloaded here: https://gitlab.com/medprint

see our presentation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HVFy9P6SiwjW9Ym5NdMPrH5GlwfBUxIm/view?usp=sharing

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Updates

posted an update —

Zwischenergebnisse: Wir haben es jetzt Samstagnachmittag und mit Helferzahlen im Bereich um 100 Personen arbeiten wir an medprint.

Unser aktuelles Mission statement ist: Wir schaffen die horizontale Integration zwischen denen, die einen dringenden medizinischen Bedarf haben und denen, die 3D-Daten haben oder modellieren hin zu denen, die additiv fertigen können bis hin zu denen, die dann ausliefern.

Um die Arbeit aufzuteilen und zu organisieren haben wir Teams gebildet: -Konzept: Im Konzept geht es darum die grundlegende Idee auszuarbeiten und zu strukturieren um sie in den anderen Teams auszuführen -BackEnd: Das BackEnd Team ist bereits dabei erste Programme an den Start zu bringen, um als Basis zum Datenaustausch zu dienen, ein Entwicklungs- und Produktivsystem wurde bereits aufgesetzt. -FrontEnd: Damit das Portal so benutzerfreundlich wie möglich wird, haben wir bereits ein Design für die Webseite vorbereitet und sind in der Programmierung des letztendlichen User Interface -3D-Druck-Anbindung: Hier wird geplant in welchen Dateiformaten die fertigen Modelle verteilt werden sollen, damit sie so einfach und so schnell wie möglich produziert werden können -Konstruktion/Materialeigenschaften:Natürlich sind Materialeigenschaften enorm wichtig im medizinischen Bereich, weshalb nach Herstellern für spezielle Materialien suchen und prüfen, welche Objekte mit klassischen Materialien gedruckt werden können -Design: Im Design befassen CAD-Experten mit dem Erstellen von hilfreichen Alltagsgegenständen und in Kooperation mit dem Team print4health der Entwicklung einer Modifikation um einweg FFP3-Masken wiederverwendbar zu machen. Denn unser wichtigstes Anliegen ist denen 3D-Modelle zur Verfügung zu stellen, die gar nicht wissen, was das ist. Deshalb soll Medprint keine Tauschbörse für 3D-Daten werden. Im Vordergrund steht die vertikale Integration von Anforderungen des medizinischen Personals mit den Fähigkeiten der Crowd. Deshalb ist der erste Schritt die Erfassung der Anforderungen, und dann die Entscheidung, ob ein vorhandenes 3D-Modell verwendet oder angefordert werden kann oder ob eines erstellt werden muss. Jeder kann sich mit seinen Fähigkeiten und Ressourcen auf der Plattform registrieren und bekommt dann entsprechende Anfragen zur Mitarbeit zugeleitet.

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