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. So only viable if everyone in the immediate area is in full PPE (staff) or in a cohort area.
3) These devices are cheap and probably could be produced in thousands BUT who is going to care for all those thousands of patients on what are uncomfortable systems to wear for any prolonged period of time. In the news article it accurately portrayed 2 clinicians applying the system, this is right, it does take 2 people usually to ensure fitted correctly and seal achieved without it being too tight.
4) whether it will “prevent” the need for intubation and ICU remains to be seen. They used CPAP extensively in Italy as they ran out of ICU beds/ staff/ ventilators and found it did not stop need for intubation and ventilation. It might delay it by 24 hours, but does not stop it.
CV19 is a rapid and progressive form of SARS and once people need CPAP or anything more than an oxygen mask they are in trouble. The disease progresses rapidly with some of the worst forms of rapid pneumonia progression I have ever seen, but CPAP could be a useful 24 hour delay to allow time to plan for who is going to care for the patient once intubate ( breathing tube down) once ventilated, meaning put on a mechanical ventilator, and taken to ICU, which ICU, have they got a bed and staff able to care for the patient?
I would be much more enthusiastic about the parapac Smith’s medical ventilators as they are basic and yet offer all the minimum functionality required. Dyson could potentially be useful if their product passes safety testing and medical device licensing.
The ventilators have to be safe! You cannot have an untested unlicensed system attached to a human being, breathing for them and then it breaks or fails. Parapac is tried and tested with tens of thousands in use worldwide with a very good safety record.
For reference a parapac ventilator usually costs £5-6k each, whereas a standard full ICU ventilator by Siemens, Puritan Bennet, Draeger, Hamilton etc are between £15 and 40k each depending upon model chosen. These machines do not come cheap because they are very complex very intricate devices that have to serve breath by breath delivery for 20 years each without breaking down or failing.
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 these ventilations……and we could even go back 2-3 years and tell them to actually replace all the pandemic PPE stocks as they went out date…..imagine that.
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 ICU beds needed, outcome, no increase in ICU capacity in the last 4 years
2) bulk buy and stockpile PPE that is compliant with WHO guidelines for an airborne pathogen. Hazmat suits, ffp3 masks or better still sealed respirators with forced filtered air. Long gowns water/ fluid resistant, goggles and visors. These need to be stockpiled in hundreds of millions of units. Outcome, HMG and NHS decided not to follow WHO guidance, stockpiling not done in adequate numbers of high grade PPE due to cost. Every healthcare worker that gets ill, is off sick when desperately needed or worse still has died or is going to die is a direct result of that decision in 2016.
3) build up diagnostic capacity for testing to very high numbers, develop vaccine production industry and sciences. This is very expensive and difficult to do, but no attempt was made post 2016 to increase this vital important capability result we are far behind supposed peer nations and scrabbling around trying to catch up.
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 exposing staff to a disease we know can kill them.
They gambled it would not come on their watch, they lost and we suffer.