Medical
Founder-Led
Canadian Emergency Ventilator.
Founder-led — Wes Chamberlin as Product Architect at StarFish Medical, prior to founding Ampersand.
As COVID-19 threatened to overwhelm Canada’s ICU capacity, a proven 1990s ventilator was modernized into the Canadian Emergency Ventilator — designed, certified, and manufactured in Canada in six months, and built as independent modules so the whole country’s expertise could build it at once.
700+
Made-in-Canada units built and shipped.
6 mo
Health Canada authorization for a program that normally takes up to 10 years.
6
Independent subsystems from Canadian experts, integrated into one ventilator.
The ask
“Take a proven 1990s Canadian ventilator and turn it into a modern, made-in-Canada ICU ventilator — fast enough to matter in a pandemic, and manufacturable at national scale.”
Client
StarFish Medical · Canadian Emergency Ventilators Inc.
Industry
Medical / Critical Care
Services
Product architecture, integration & manufacturing strategy
Engagement
Full program · concept → production
Timeline
6 months · 2020
Role
Product Architect — 1 of 5 core leads
Context
Prior to founding Ampersand
Problem
COVID-19 threatened to outstrip a global ventilator supply chain already stretched thin. Canada needed its own ICU-grade ventilators — designed, certified, and built domestically, in a fraction of the usual timeline, and without competing for the parts every other ventilator maker was scrambling to secure.
Insight
Speed at that scale wasn’t a single-team problem — it was an architecture problem. If the ventilator were broken into independent modules, expert Canadian companies could each develop, build, and test their piece independently and in parallel, and StarFish could integrate them into one ICU-grade device. The modular architecture was what made a national, made-in-Canada effort possible in months instead of years.
Solution
A modular, made-in-Canada ICU ventilator that:
- Splits into independent modules six Canadian vendors could develop and test in parallel
- Builds on Dr. Magdy Younes’ proven design rather than starting from a blank sheet
- Uses a domestic supply chain, avoiding the parts other ventilators needed
- Delivers ICU-grade ventilation — the full range of modes an ARDS patient needs
Proof-of-concept prototypes came together in two months and Alpha units a month later. The design was validated with respiratory therapists and in first-in-human trials, authorized by Health Canada in September 2020, and manufactured at scale — over 700 units delivered.
Recognized with Gold at the 2020 International Design Awards — a program-wide honor for the Winnipeg Ventilator design team.
“Masterpiece indeed.”
Dr. Magdy Younes — inventor of the original Winnipeg Ventilator, on the modernized design