Hospitals Need to Repair Ventilators. Manufacturers Are Making That Impossible

We are seeing how the monopolistic repair and lobbying practices of medical device companies are making our response to the coronavirus pandemic harder. As hospitals face the prospect of a critical ventilator shortage caused by the worst public health crisis in a century, they face another problem: not being able to repair the ventilators that they do have. This is because, like John Deere, Apple, and so many other electronics companies, the major device manufacturers have spent the last several years cementing a repair monopoly.

They’ve done this by lobbying against legislation that would make it easier to repair machines, keeping access to repair guides out of the hands of independent repair professionals, and using software controls to limit who can perform repairs.

Source: vice.com