I was just thinking the same thing. My 5yo son has a wimpy immune system and asthma. We have spent some scary times in the ER/PICU when he gets a bad lung based cold. I am thinking about how I can convert one of my old CPAPs into a ventilator if I can't get him into a hospital to get the care he will need due to the healthcare system being overwhelmed. It should be obvious, but I will say it to be clear. This would be a last resort kind of thing on my end. The last thing I want to do is "wing it" with any kind of medical care on my kids.

Really, you don't need to "convert" anything much. Plain old CPAP is better than nothing (especially if it has c-flex (or diff name depending on manufacturer) to allow for decreased pressure during exhale). In fact it is WAY better than nothing if a person is needing support and can't get them in help as we may soon be encountering.

There are forums out there that teach you how to adjust the settings on your CPAP/APAP/BiPAP machines, including how to get into the "clinician mode" to make REAL adjustments (e.g., like pressing and holding two buttons down on machine for couple seconds puts you into clinician menu settings). There is also software out there that will let you download the data from the SD card in most machines to your computer and analyze it. This isn't terribly critical, but if you have motivation / need it is handy to know how to do this. Makes titration much faster/easier and with less trial and error.

sleepyhead is the name of software (open source, no long maaintained unfortunatly but entirely functional still). Just google for sleep apnea forums.

Good luck with your son and rest of family!

I hear a lot of CPAP owners hack their devices for privacy reasons. I wonder if just any technical user could do this today? What would be required?

Google. There are handful of sleep apnea forums with instructions on how to enter into the "clinician mode" of most machines. From there, you can adjust modes, pressure levels, etc. Said forums also have wealth of information on WHAT to change. There is also software called "sleepyhead" that is free and downloadable if you really want to geek out and understand the data saved by the machine.

I "hack" (not really, just doing stuff / adjustments that clinics supposed to do) my machine for no other reason than they clinicians are useless once they sell you a sleep study and machine. You are typically on your own once you get it unfortunately, which is why the success rate of people using CPAP machines is usually pretty low. It can be a frustrating process without help and even if you do have good clinician, it is still frustrating to get used to it (some moreso than others).