This chapter is dedicated to clarifying the effects of the current outbreak of COVID-19 around the globe, and the pandemic it cased on the progress of the project presented in the report. COVID-19 was first discovered in Wuhan, China. It is a new advanced generation of coronavirus. A person infected with the virus typically, go through a course of illness that normally range from mild to moderate symptoms. Unfortunately, for people with a weak immune system or who suffer chronic diseases, extreme symptoms and Severe complications might occur, what is more in many cases this virus could even lead to death [23]. Due to this virus outbreak the whole word is in quarantine. Schools, universities, shopping centers, public transportations have all been shut down in almost every country round the world. Learning have been converted to distance learning in a matter of days, working became from home and governments have set curfews for the people. The very sudden and most unfortunate change have affected the progress of the project greatly and negatively, where it has created several challenges for the team working on the project and the advancements in its planed tasks. Some of the challenges the pandemic created and how it affected the progress of this project are listed in this chapter:

Adapting to distance learning:

The pandemic of Covid-19 virus caused great confusion over the educational process around the world, where the outbreak of this pandemic led to close many educational institutions. Universities and schools have not faced this level of disturbance in generations. Therefore, QU has shifted to e-learning platforms during this pandemic to complete the educational process for this year. The sudden transformation of distance learning affected the students very much as well as the instructors, where they are not adapted to deal with the new technologies as this fast. The team spent 2-3 weeks to get involved with the new educational process. This timeout affected the team in particular, where they are expected to finish other courses’ projects and to handle the process of SDP. In fact, many senior students need to complete and test their projects inside the university’s laboratories, where this option is not available these days. Consequently, the procedure of printing the design of the 3D molds has not being done, because of the need for the 3D printer that the university provides for the use of students. Hence, filling up the molds with the flesh-like material stage has been interrupted, where the molds are not printed yet. Moreover, the practice of modifying the code that the previous team has developed for the pulsatile pump has not being done, because of the need for the necessarily components such as the breadboard and the flow meter adapters that the team already purchased, but did not receive them yet because of the worldwide pandemic. Even though, the team ask the supervisor to provide the main equipment such as the pumps, and the power supply unit, but unfortunately, they were not enough to complete this task.

Lack of recourses:

The team faced difficulties regarding lack of resources, whether with real or virtual resources. For real resources, the team could not arrange further meetings to HMC, to discuss any progress with the doctors their due to their limited time. Specially, for persons with their positions, where any ECMO specialist is needed the most to overcome this pandemic. Moreover, the team could not arrange a meeting with the member of the first team that designed the ECMO machine simulator and developed the main mobile application, to discuss the procedure to develop an integrated mobile application for neonatal ECMO simulator, that is used to add emergency situations to the simulator. The meeting was supposed to be a real-life meeting, to get the team familiarized with the mobile application software, and with the specific procedure to build-in the main mobile application. Furthermore, the procedure of downloading or integrating the EEG signals into the system has not being done as well, because the team could not be able to access many websites and online journals, where most of them need to be accessed through the university network, as well as the need for extra wires and small components for the circuit connections. Also, the team purchased adapters for the flow meters to be able to connect them to the system. However, the team did not receive the adapters, due to the pandemic effect on the worldwide shipments.

Lack of motivation

Adapting to the current world situation caused by COVID-19 and the changes it caused in the day to day life has been extremely difficult. People are uncertain and scared which caused a grate lack of motivation to continue working and proceed with chores with most people. This played a major role in the progress of the project epically since did not know what to expect the or how will the progress continue with the lack of resource and the time spent on adaption to the online learning, also the fact that it was not possible to complete the project as intended was extremely discouraging for the team.