In early March of 2020, our group at the CBA started a number of [rapid coronavirus response projects](https://gitlab.cba.mit.edu/pub/coronavirus/tracking). We brought together a range of subject matter experts from a variety of disciplines, including regulatory agencies, medical professionals, airflow modeling specialists, and supply chain managers. Our hope was to quickly learn what gaps existed in the worldwide virus response and respond by quickly prototyping solutions before spinning the concepts off to traditional vendors or the distributed FabLab network for manufacturing and scaling. One early success came about in caregiver PPE, where we helped the Project Manus team rapidly prototype and evaluate their [folded plastic faceshield](https://project-manus.mit.edu/fs). This project built on our earlier tests of [crowdsourced face shield designs](https://gitlab.cba.mit.edu/zfredin/quickshield) and spawned an [open-source version](https://gitlab.cba.mit.edu/alfonso/fabshield) designed for bulk fabrication using FabLab equipment.
During the course of our collaboration with several local medical institutions, we learned that patient-centric personal protective equipment (PPE) could provide a great deal of value by reducing infection risk for the myriad of specialists that treat a typical covid-19 patient. We started by exploring altenatives to Dr. Hsien Yung Lai's [Aerosol Box](https://sites.google.com/view/aerosolbox/design), eventually designing and field-testing a [folded version](https://gitlab.cba.mit.edu/alfonso/covid-isolation-box) made out of a single sheet of low-cost plastic. Subsequent discussions suggested that a version capable of containing aerosols in addition to sprayed bodily fluids would go much further, as it would unlock caregivers' ability to use non-invasive ventilation techniques such as BiPAP, CPAP, and nebulizers. This independent study proposal explores the design, prototyping, and early trials of such a system.