The UK government has ordered more ventilators than the total number it says it needs to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, after unveiling an order for 15,000 new machines on Monday.
Ventilator Challenge UK – a consortium of engineering firms including Airbus, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems as well as a series of Formula One motor racing teams – has secured an order for 10,000 of two types of machine currently produced by Smiths Medical of Luton and an Oxfordshire-based firm called Penlon.
The consortium, which is helping the firms ramp up its standard production rates, said it would begin making the order this week.
A “reservation order” for a further 5,000 machines has also been placed with Smiths, while the Cabinet Office said that there are 8,000 ventilators currently in the NHS with a further 8,000 already on order from overseas.
It has previously been announced that another 10,000 machines have been contracted from the vacuum cleaner group Dyson, although as this is a completely new design it will need regulatory approval.
If all of these and the other orders are supplied, it would take the total number of ventilators in the NHS to 41,000, while the government has said it will need a total of 30,000 ventilators to cope with the height of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Meanwhile, a breathing aid that was designed and built in less than a week to keep Covid-19 patients out of intensive care has been delivered to London hospitals for clinical trials. Engineers from UCL and doctors at University College London hospital (UCLH) developed the continuous positive airway pressure (Cpap) device – which is claimed to be an improvement on existing Cpap systems – with Mercedes Formula One in less than 100 hours from first meeting to first production model.
“These devices will help to save lives by ensuring that ventilators, a limited resource, are used only for the most severely ill,” said Prof Mervyn Singer, a UCLH critical care consultant who worked on the design.
Dick Elsy, the manufacturing executive and car industry veteran who is leading the Ventilator Challenge UK consortium, said: “[The consortium members] are working together with incredible determination and energy to scale up production of much-needed ventilators and combat a virus that is affecting people in many countries. I am confident this consortium has the skills and tools to make a difference and save lives.”
The consortium, which did not reveal how long it would take to fulfil the order, has been assembled to increase the capacity of the manufacturing process, so that more of the Smiths and Penlon machines can be produced.
As well as lending factory floor space and logistical know-how, the companies have redeployed some of their most skilled engineers from key company projects to work on the ventilator effort. The areas of cooperation are also understood to include component sub-assembly and component procurement.
The Smiths design, which is portable and has been used in the NHS for about 10 years, will not require regulatory approval as it is a current design.
The Penlon product is being slightly modified from an existing approved model, but the consortium said it expected “very prompt regulatory sign-off”.
Government’s procurement strategy
The government is pursuing a three-pronged strategy to source ventilators for the NHS to treat Covid-19 patients, scaling up production of existing ones, ordering newly designed models and importing machines from overseas.
Ventilator Challenge UK is led by High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a group of manufacturing research centres in the UK, and consists of: Airbus; BAE Systems; Ford Motor Company; GKN Aerospace; Inspiration Healthcare Group; Meggitt; Penlon; Renishaw; Rolls-Royce; Siemens; Smiths Medical; Thales; Ultra Electronics; and Unilever. It also involves a collection of Formula One teams: Haas F1; McLaren; Mercedes; Red Bull Racing; Racing Point; Renault Sport Racing; and Williams. The consortium has an order for 5,000 machines from Penlon and 5,000 from Smiths Medical. A “reservation” for a further 5,000 from Smiths has also been placed by the government.
Dyson and Cambridge-based The Technology Partnership have joined forces to come up with a new ventilator design, the CoVent. It has received an order for 10,000 machines, but they require regulatory approval.
Crawley-based Inspiration Healthcare has signed a £4m contract with the government to import devices from Israel and the US, although the order was understood to be for fewer than 500. The government says that, including the Inspiration order, a total of 8,000 have been ordered from “all over the world”.
