Broadening the global supply chain for reliable, accessible air-purifying respirators.

As the COVID19 pandemic continues to highlight structural fragility in our global supply chains, nowhere is the risk more evident than in the startling shortage of reliable personal protective equipment.

Open Standard Respirator came from a community effort formed to explore and implement a safe alternative to traditional N95 filtering face piece respirators.

Systemic Supply Chain Failures

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), like many categories of highly regulated medical product, is traditionally locked behind proprietary patents and other forms of intellectual property. During a global shortage, these IP barriers prevent rapid and distributed surge production as individual supply chains become critical bottlenecks.

As global demand skyrocketed, the COVID19 pandemic rendered the rigidity of traditional supply chains a fatal encumbrance to meeting the real needs of real people. Existing manufacturing quickly became overwhelmed expanding surge production, eliminating the chance for new demand clusters to efficiently secure equipment.

This shortcoming was evident in the widespread efforts that sprung up utilizing distributed production methods such as additive manufacturing to supply front line medical workers with emergency use equipment. Unfortunately, additive manufacturing technologies still lack a widespread level of material and production quality and sophistication, which limits the safety, repeatability, and scalability of these commendable efforts.

Accessible PPE designs that are optimized for mass production provide a safe, scalable, accessible alternative.