As the pandemic began, Dr. Doug Romney, an emergency medicine doctor and educator, was worried about what he believed would be a shortage of ventilators. So he started thinking about how to build a more affordable, more available, vent. He brought some of his colleagues into the fold, and they brought in some of their colleagues, and within a few weeks the team that would become 8B Medical was assembled. Together, our team of doctors and engineers managed to create a prototype critical care ventilator, in the space of five months. Along the way we learned a great deal about how ventilators work and how medicine is practiced on patients with severe pulmonary distress. Those learnings drove the new technologies that are central to the product we are developing now.