Strategic Investment in Open Hardware for National Security

Distributed manufacturing of an open-source tourniquet testing system

Tourniquets are effective for casualty-prevention in emergency situations. The use of centrally-manufactured commercial tourniquets, however, is not always possible due to supply chain disruptions. The open-source hardware model has been applied to overcome these disruptions in humanitarian crises and several low-cost digitally manufacturable open-source tourniquets have been developed. With the low reliability of improvised tourniquets, it is important to ensure that distributed manufacturing of tourniquets is effective and safe. Tourniquets can be tested, but existing tourniquet testers are expensive, bulky, and complex to operate, which limits their accessibility to an even greater extent than tourniquets in extreme settings. This article fulfills a need by providing a small, transportable, open-source additive-manufactured tourniquet tester that enables inexpensive and accurate testing of tourniquets against known clinical parameters. The <$100 tourniquet tester is validated and tested for operating force of tourniquets in the field or in distributed manufacturing facilities. The tourniquet tester has a significant economic and operational advantage compared to proprietary counterparts available on the market. Once calibrated with a blood pressure monitor, the built-in LCD displays the measuring range of the tester as 0 to 200 N, which is enough to test the validation of all tourniquets.