Broken Ventilators Add Momentum to ‘Right to Repair’ Movement
More than 20 states are now considering bills that would let consumers repair devices, from tractors to iPhones.
Equipment in an emergency field hospital for the Covid-19 pandemic in New York’s Central Park on March 31, 2020.
Photographer: Misha Friedman/Getty Images
A recall of an electrosurgical device wouldn’t normally cause panic for Ilir Kullolli. As the director of clinical technology and biomedical engineering at a hospital in California, his job is to calmly orchestrate service and repairs so doctors—and patients—never notice when a piece of technology is down.
But a lot of medical equipment is sold with the requirement that only the manufacturer can make repairs. In April 2020, during the first surge of Covid-19 hospitalizations, Kullolli’s hospital faced the grim possibility of reverting to hand-and-scalpel surgeries while it awaited a critical device update by a manufacturer, even though in-house staff were capable of fixing the problem. Ultimately the company allowed it, but only after hours of calls and meetings.