Billionaires aren’t the only ones stepping up to help with the needed medical equipment, take Bloom Energy, a fuel cell company that brings old ventilators back into service–all while continuing to manufacture fuel cells that power supermarkets and hospitals.
Two weeks ago, the governor of California put out a call for manufacturers to help fill critical gaps in equipment, including ventilators. Having the necessary engineering capacity to help out, Bloom answered the governor’s call and immediately joined the effort.
A few days after reaching out to the governor, the company already received a small shipment of 24 ventilators that hadn’t been used for more than a decade. After figuring out how to both build and repair the devices, in no time, the team had refurbished all of them, making tweaks like charging or changing batteries, checking sensors, and sometimes replacing other parts.
The company partnered with Stanford’s pulmonary lab to test the equipment, along with a company called Cure Biomedics that services hospital equipment. So far, it’s received 550 old ventilators and shipped more than 350 refurbished units to the State of California, which will distribute them to hospitals.
