Medical Device Page Project Guidelines

Use this page for more information on the Medical Device Page Project.

Medinor.org is a server we set up to help organize a large cache of files from the biomedical community. It contains tons of repair manuals for medical devices of all kinds, which we want—but also a lot of other stuff we don’t. Also, it’s very disorganized. Even though everything in it has been widely shared publicly, please treat it as sensitive while we sort through and delete nonessential files.

Your job is to rename and organize these files into the proper categories and folders. More instructions can be found below.

Email biomed@ifixit.com to let us know that you’re interested in participating in this monumental task. Include your name, email address, location (time zone), and a short blurb about what you do and why you’re interested in volunteering. We’ll set up an account for you to access Medinor.org and we’ll send you an email with your login credentials for Medinor.org. Don’t worry if you haven’t received your login credentials yet. We don’t want too many people using the website all at once, so just sit tight and you’ll get your credentials eventually.

For some reason, opening and reading PDFs is much faster through FireFox as opposed to Google Chrome. If you’re only able to use Google Chrome, it’s fine; just know that in some cases, you’ll have to download the PDF from Medinor.org in order to view the entire document. You can download the latest version of FireFox here.

You’ll mainly be working in two folders on Medinor.org: PDFs and Medical Devices. We recommend you to use at least three separate tabs/windows for this project.

• One tab/window is used for the spreadsheet.One tab/window is used to show the ‘PDFs’ folder on Medinor.org.One tab/window is used to show the ‘Medical Devices’ folder on Medinor.org.

Orientation: Inside the “My Files” root folder at medinor.org, you’ll find:

• All Literature—this contains the original cache of files. You can ignore this.PDFs—this is our “inbox,” containing files to be sorted. It contains everything we got from All Literature after stripping out non-PDFs and files <20 KB. The goal of the project is to identify everything in here we want to keep, organize it, and move it to…Medical Device—this is the “outbox” for PDFs we’re keeping, a.k.a. our final product. The folders in here need to be correctly named and organized so they mirror the content structure at ifixit.com/Device/Medical_Device - when it’s all done, we’ll run a script to automatically import everything inside to iFixit and create appropriate device/category pages along the way.Archive, Backup, Future Work, etc.—You can safely ignore these.

Assign yourself a folder (or set of folders) from the ‘Folder Assignments’ spreadsheet. Enter your name in the ‘Reserved By’ column so that everyone can stay on the same page. (Remember, folders on this list are located within the “PDFs” parent directory.)

Once you’re done with a folder as described below, please mark it ‘Complete!’ in Column D on the spreadsheet. If you started on a section and are unable to continue, please mark that folder as ‘Started but didn’t finish’ and leave a note of where you left off in Column E.

In each assigned folder and sub-folder, see what content is there, and decide whether to keep or delete each file.

• Service manuals are high priority, as are Owner/Operator manuals. Keep them!Parts lists - take a look and decide if it seems useful, but DELETE it if you see prices or price lists. Those prices are (most likely) out of date and are customer-specific. Service manuals usually include a parts list so these are often redundant.Non-relevant files. Delete anything that is specific to a hospital, logistics, or other files that are not broadly useful for fixing machines.Other/edge cases: Do your best to finish up your assigned categories, but if you’re totally stumped on a difficult file, flag it as “NEEDS REVIEW” and make a note in the Medinor Curation spreadsheet.

Rename these files so each one is easily readable/identifiable by humans. Include the manufacturer name, model name, and the type of manual the PDF covers all in the title of the document. (Don’t worry about preserving information in the original filename.)

• Example: Welch Allyn 300 Series Service Manual.pdf

For more details on how to correctly name the medical devices and the documents, please visit the Device Nomenclature page.

If a document contains more than one language: If it contains English, you need not do anything more—you’re done! But if it does not contain English, add a suffix with the first (or primary) two-letter language code. (Please visit this website for more information on the ISO two-letter language codes.)

• Example name for file containing only English, or multiple languages including English: Welch Allyn 300 Series Service Manual.pdf (same as above)Example name for file that includes only German, and no English: Welch Allyn 300 Series Service Manual_DE.pdf

After consulting with the biomed community, we’ve decided to organize all documentation based primarily on the setting in which it is used—Clinical, Laboratory, etc. You’ll find these folders already created. Inside each of those, create additional folders for organizing your files as needed:

• One subfolder per device type (e.g. Ventilator) (note: singular).Sub-subfolders for each manufacturer of that device type (e.g. ACME Ventilator).Note: Include the device type (that’s important) and don’t just say ACME.When possible, use the most current manufacturer or the most prominent mfr. logo on the machine/deviceSub-sub-subfolders for each specific device (e.g. ACME Super Pro 9000).No need to include the device type here. Keep it short, but DO include the manufacturer.

Note: every folder has to have a globally unique name. ‘Testing Fixture’ isn’t unique enough, while Drager 1840 Testing Fixture is fine.

• Note: Include the device type (that’s important) and don’t just say ACME.When possible, use the most current manufacturer or the most prominent mfr. logo on the machine/device

• No need to include the device type here. Keep it short, but DO include the manufacturer.

When each folder you’ve assigned yourself is empty, delete it and mark it complete on the spreadsheet. Rinse and repeat!

If you’re not sure if a file is relevant, flag it as “NEEDS REVIEW” and make a note in the Medinor Curation spreadsheet.

Duplicates: Delete one of them. If you see two revisions of the same manual, only keep the newest version and delete the older ones.

Even though the changes made by your teammates ARE syncing in the background, they only display when you refresh the page. (Browser refresh button works best; refresh button in the UI seems glitchy.)

There’s no undo, so work carefully. We do have a backup, but we would prefer not to use it.

When opening/viewing PDF files: Sometimes you can scroll through and see the file, but sometimes it won’t display or only displays the first page. In that case, download the file to view it. (If you still can’t view it in Reader even after downloading, it’s junk. Delete it!)

Move quickly and err on the side of deleting unnecessary things. Don’t feel bad, this is a huge project and we gotta move fast. Don’t sit there paralyzed about making a decision. This is about getting a first draft out into the world. If you’re getting demoralized and feeling like you’re not working on something important, flag it as “NEEDS REVIEW” and move on. Keep your momentum going.

The most important machines are ventilators, anesthesia machines, respirators, BiPAP, CPAP and other breathing assistance machines. After that, we want to cover all equipment commonly used in hospitals around the world. The goal is to have a single comprehensive resource for biomedical engineers and other medical professionals.

This spreadsheet contains a list of all the folders on Medinor. Let’s double-check each one and make sure it’s correct, so we can publish them all!

First, assign yourself a folder by adding your name next to it on the spreadsheet. Then, on Medinor, right-click on the folder and label it as Review In Progress.

Next, check that (a) the folder is named correctly, consistent with all the instructions above, and (b) any additional files or folders inside are also named and sorted correctly.

Common issues you might need to fix include:

• PDF documents with insufficiently descriptive names, such as 030139381.pdf. Make sure a human can tell what the file is simply by looking at it. If needed, open the document, see what it actually is, and re-name it appropriately. For example: Maquet Servo-i Ventilator - Service Manual.pdf.Non-specific folder names, such as a folder named only after the manufacturer, without including the device type. For example, within the Ventilator folder, a subfolder named simply “Maquet” is insufficient. Rename the subfolder “Maquet Ventilator.”Folder names with other problems, such as language codes, or nonspecific names such as “manuals.” Every folder should be named after a type of device (“Ventilator”), manufacturer + type of device (“Maquet Ventilator”), or specific device model (“Maquet Servo-i”). Specific device models should not have any subfolders for things like “service bulletins”—move those files into the parent device folder, and delete the “service bulletins” folder.

Make any needed changes, or email us if you have questions.

• If the folder seems like it has too many problems and you need help fixing it, re-label it as NEEDS WORK (both on Medinor and on the list below in the “Folder Status” column).

Finally, when everything checks out, re-label the folder as Reviewed. That’s it! Assign yourself another folder, rinse and repeat.

This is the first phase of the project, where we are triaging documents and paring it down to a manageable list. Next up we’ll be adding metadata, photos, additional contextual information about each device, and identifying what information is missing.