Development of medical devices for personal protection and for use in analysis laboratories with rapid prototyping

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic that we are experiencing has been presented as a challenge for humanity. The ignorance of the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the resulting collapse of the health systems of each country began to mirror political decisions to underestimate the virus (or to privilege the inertia of the system that we believed was the only thing that we knew). Argentina's political anticipation of facing the pandemic with a quarantine (mandatory social distancing) made it clear that prevention exceeded the demand of the health sector but allowed the reformulation of action systems, as well as society, institutions and science and technology entities, such as the Aerospace Technology Center (CTA), they found a point of convergence to solve the different demands through collaborative process networks, such as the cases that we will describe of laboratory supplies, for analysis of COVID-19 tests and of bio-security elements, which respond to the Protocol for Personal Protective Equipment recommended by the World Health Organization / raised by the Ministry of Health of the Nation, for essential workers. The developments were approached from the perspective of open design, creating a FabLab, within the CTA, of manufacturing technology by additive methods (FDM).