Calling All USU Innovation and Maker Spaces!
Our friends at dpict—a design and facilitation firm— and The Value Web network would like to support connections between your university maker spaces and medical centers to collaborate in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Much needed Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is in short supply around the world, and there is an opportunity for your university to take a leadership role in supporting your local community needs. They hope to help you maximize the capacity and utility of campus resources to combat this pandemic.
The Ask
Dpict/The Value Web would like to partner with USU innovation and maker spaces to understand what your local health professionals need, and how you can mobilize to help. Currently, idle university maker spaces represent an immediate opportunity to scale local production of masks, face shields, respirators, and other PPE. Not only is there potential for individual capacity, but especially so within the context of leveraging maker spaces across our university network to create a fast-learning and responsive ecosystem to deliver and serve a common need across our communities. This partnership has the potential to unlock and allocate resources across our network in a way we’ve never worked. This will also set a new standard for the field on the types of maker/university partnerships for the future.
Istock credit: feverpitched
The Network
Dpict and The Value Web designers intend to create and customize a framework and conditions for collaboration between university maker spaces and medical centers to produce the PPE needed in their local health system. The network seeks to create a more coordinated, integrated, and strategic approach to communicating solutions and strengthening local and national medical responses.
The Model
Dpict/TVW team members will work with those interested and able in our network to quickly get up and running on producing PPE. They will provide guidance on 1) existing Open Source Medical supply efforts; 2) models for collaboration with Health Care Professionals; and 3) a strategic, systems-level approach to connecting with other university/maker spaces to strengthen local responses.
This is an important model for addressing the complexity and uncertainty of a short-mid-term future. COVID-19 has shown a remarkable ability to overwhelm systems, despite advance warning. Conditions change faster than infrastructure can respond. A networked systems approach helps build resilience and capacity for the sudden shifts we can’t predict, but that we know will come.
How to Connect
If interested, please contact our friends below directly:
Mike Fleisch, mike@dpict.info
Scott Holzman, scott@dpict.info
Talk with Mike and Scott on USU’s Virtual Call
Mike and Scott will be joining us on the USU virtual call on Friday, April 3 at 1:00 ET. Check your email boxes for the zoom link to join us.
Header photo credit: Istock: soronosov