Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Free Standards for Personal Protective Equipment

April 8th, 2020

In response to requests from the community of STEM librarians and practitioners working to address the lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) available to the health care community and other essential workers, a variety of organizations have made relevant professional standards freely available to the community of researchers and practitioners to ensure equipment produced is effective and compliant.

Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI): https://www.aami.org/news-resources/aami-coronavirus-updates/coronavirus-resources-for-the-field, which includes standards for masks, gowns, gloves, ventilators, and sterilization procedures.

ASTM International:  www.astm.org/COVID-19, which includes standards related to masks, gowns, gloves, hand sanitizers, and respirators.

European Union (EU) standards: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_502, in collaboration with all their members, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) have agreed to immediately make available a number of European standards for certain medical devices and personal protective equipment.

IEEE: https://innovate.ieee.org/covid-19_related_research/, which includes standards related to medical device communication, medical modelling and more.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO):  https://www.ansi.org/news_publications/news_story?menuid=7&articleid=b866ab14-cf68-4f60-b462-38214e190d8f, includes (as of 4/2/2020) 31 standards documents from ISO covering medical equipment and devices—ventilators and respiratory equipment; protective clothing used in health care settings; and business continuity management, security, and resilience. Available on the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Standards Connect platform.

This list will be updated as needed and made available on the Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies Standards guide (https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/standards). Purdue has access to many more standards through our library subscriptions. Contact Margaret Phillips (phill201@purdue.edu) for questions about finding or accessing these or other standards.