COVID-19 app by Festo wins Give a Breath Challenge award

The award-winning Virus Fighters’ Handbook, a smartphone app co-developed by Festo, provides a digital manual on how to operate and maintain open source equipment, including ventilators, in the fight against Covid-19.

Festo Canada never stops introducing new innovations, including the Virus Fighters’ Handbook: a Smartphone app that provides a digital manual for field personnel on how to operate and maintain ventilators and other open source equipment to help fight the Coronavirus. Developed in partnership with the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) in Germany, this COVID-19 app was recently recognized at the Give a Breath Challenge awards in Munich.

Chosen from 150 project designs

Launched in March, the Give a Breath Challenge was split into three categories, one of which was the provision of information on the use of equipment along with basic knowledge of the virus. The aim was to create a technological basis for a fast local supply of ventilators to make up for imminent shortages in emergency treatment of COVID-19 patients, while mitigating the effect of the pandemic for infected people around the world. More than 150 project designs were submitted to the Challenge from around the globe; the awards were handed out on July 29.

The Virus Fighters’ Handbook will soon be available for free for iOS and Android devices and as an online application. Festo has based this COVID-19 app on its own Smartenance remote maintenance app, adjusted based on advice from medical experts from several hospitals. The app is primarily intended to benefit irregular staff recruited to work in field hospitals who are unfamiliar with the equipment. It gives detailed information to registered users from medical and service professionals on how to build, operate, and maintain the equipment.

Festo offered a stable platform that required only minimal programming in Smartenance, one of its most powerful new digital apps. Smartenance software is typically used for the maintenance and servicing of machines and systems in industrial production. The IPA crew, which specializes in developing didactic materials in the area of medical technology, provided the training content for this COVID-19 app.

With the Virus Fighter’s Handbook, Festo can help people worldwide fight the Coronavirus with a purely digital product – and the Give a Breath Challenge award has confirmed its credibility.

To learn more, contact Festo.

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