Collective Global Impact

Makers, crafters, retooled manufacturers, and small businesses across the world stepped up to fight COVID-19-induced supply shortages by locally producing necessary medical supplies for healthcare workers, essential workers, and their communities.

Open Source Medical Supplies and Nation of Makers teamed up to survey these global efforts and tell the story of how makerspaces and local manufacturing can help respond to a crisis.

48.3+ Million

Units of Medical Supplies Delivered

$268 Million

Worth of Supplies Manufactured

42,000+

Citizen Responders

1,869+

Local Response Groups Tracked

Countries with Local Response Efforts

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OSMS and Nation of Makers will release the full report narrative and data analysis on January 28, 2021. If you are interested in using this data for research, reporting, or policy, please reach out to us. Add your email to be notified of the report release.

Download the Report Overview

The global community of makers, crafters and small businesses collaborated early on in the pandemic to develop open source designs for common medical supplies used to fight COVID-19, and then began production using a wide range of manufacturing equipment.

These supplies were distributed to healthcare workers, essential workers, and others within local communities when the medical supply chain failed and couldn’t keep up with global demand for PPE and other medical supplies.

These production efforts coordinated and shared open source information digitally, but produced supplies locally across the world.

Data Collection Methods

OSMS held an informal public weekly tally from March to August of 2020, in which it surveyed members of its Facebook group of 72,000 people from across the globe (see example). Data publicly submitted by over 300 response groups was vetted by our staff before being included in this dataset.

OSMS and Nation of Makers (NOM) then teamed up to create and release a Community Impact Survey to more-fully understand the technologies used, activity status of the groups, and partnerships that were built as part of supply production and distribution. We also have incorporated response data from a parallel Fab Foundation survey of its global network of FabLabs.

Interactive Infographic:
Equipment Types Produced

This infographic is exclusively fed by the Tally data we’ve obtained between March and August 2020, and therefore tracks a total of 16 Million devices. You can interact with our dashboard by clicking on specific equipment types, or selecting them and the date ranges from the dropdown menus on the top.

Interactive Infographic:
Relative Production Data, Normalized by Population

The above infographic displays relative production – PPE items per million population – for each of the 52 countries we have received production data from.

Interactive Infographic:
Production Quantities by Locations

The above infographic opens in a new window due to mapping requirements. It displays the cities, states and countries of our data sources. Some organizations are nation-wide collaborations, so the pins are centered within these countries. You can filter by country.

Metropolitan Hospital, NYD, 9th Fl ICU, Suzette Cook

“...it meant the world and literally, in some cases, probably our lives to have this equipment and protective equipment produced and distributed by this army of volunteers. And…I don’t know that we can ever say thank you enough.“
David Rainosek, MD, Associate Medical Director of St. Vincent Rehabilitation Hospital, Arkansas, USA

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