The Government have asked the VentilatorChallengeUK consortium to begin the rapid production of ventilator systems for the fight against Covid-19.
“Given the urgent timescale with thousands of ventilators required in the coming weeks, it made sense for companies with strong experience in producing ventilators to lead this effort, with others bringing expertise in high value precision manufacturing and engineering to support them.
Our role in VentilatorChallengeUK is to help ramp up production of a proven ventilator design, which has been supplied by a leading UK medical company to help those suffering from the virus. We will be providing integrated, tested sub-systems and components, which makes best use of our strong project management and engineering skills, while saving significant time during final assembly of the ventilators.
This is a fantastic reflection on our employees’ commitment to help the UK at this time. They have worked tirelessly to support the ventilator initiative and continue to look at other ways to help the NHS and the nation during this difficult situation.”
According to the VentilatorChallengeUK website:
“A consortium of significant UK industrial, technology and engineering businesses from across the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors, has come together to produce medical ventilators for the UK.
The VentilatorChallengeUK Consortium (“the consortium”) is led by Dick Elsy, CEO of High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a group of manufacturing research centres in the UK. Over the past week the consortium has been working hard to investigate production of a range of ventilator design options to meet a high-level specification for a Rapidly Manufactured Ventilator System (“RMVS”) developed by clinicians and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (“MHRA”). The consortium has evaluated all requirements to design, manufacture, assemble and test components, as well as finished medical ventilators. Companies in the consortium have now received formal orders from the Government in excess of 10,000 units.”
I do hope that the purchase of ventilators hasn’t been done through the MOD. We’ll probably end up with 30,000 lavatory extraction fans!
The little chap pictured above costs a tad under $7,000!
Changing the polarity of an Xpelair (Lav-Ext-Fan) would only cost £30.00 per unit.
Let’s hope that we/The UK, can produce enough ventilators within the time frame.
It was announced today that the Mercedes F1 Team has been working with UCL to reverse engineer and enhance a CPAP device that will help Covid19 patients before they have to be Intubated.Production will be starting this week.
Well done all that are helping let’s try as many ways we can hopefully clap devices reduce the need for ventilators
CPAP even – auto-correct can be annoying
See my full detailed reply above
See my full detailed reply above
Hi Paul. As an ICU clinician and frontline NHS worker for 23+ years, plus ex military experience. I can honestly say this UCLH work made me laugh for the following reasons 1) CPAP is not a new therapy, it has been around since 1950s. So miss representation by uclh and press. Although I understand why as the country needs good news stories and hope at this time. 2) unless the patient is treated in a cohort area, where everyone else is covid19 positive this system will just distribute the virus as well or better than coughing into the open air.… Read more »
I must say I was amazed to discover that UCLH had just invented a machine I was attaching to patients faces 20 years ago….truly amazing….all I can think of is that they have invented time travel at the same time and sent back a CPAP machine 20 years in the past….the mind boggles. Just think we could even go back a couple of months and tell the government they should implement social isolation policies and effective contact tracing and testing programmes from early February instead of playing hope it’s going to be all ok…then we would not even need all… Read more »
Fitted for but not with……plugs ?
See my full detailed reply above
Excellent and well informed comment. Hats off to you sir
I wish the same focus could have been put on PPE production.
Jonathon, they were warned, as in the conservative government, admittedly not the same bunch as in power now. In 2016 there was a high level war game exercise on a pandemic there were several outcomes and learning from this exercise, which it would be good if the press could get a hold of a copy as it has been hushed up. Outcomes or recommendations 1) the uk pre coronavirus had one of the lowest numbers per capita of ICU beds of any developed industrial nation. This meant bed occupancy was high and no spare capacity. More full time purpose built… Read more »
Yes I know, my level of anger at present is a wee bit more than high, as we now have to live with and work with those decisions around not growing and replacing the national contingency stockpiles we had that have now all gone out of date. 10 years ago we were actually ready for this, I had access to pallet loads of appropriate PPE, emergency contingency pods, teams trained in haz mat and decontamination…….it was all sacrificed on the alter of austerity, now we are throwing away pallet loads of out of date not fit for purpose PPE and… Read more »