News

Ventilator Challenge UK Awarded Prestigious Special Award for Design Engineering

In mid-March 2020 – with UK Covid-19 cases spiralling out of control – unsettling news began to emerge from the UK’s hospitals, where potentially crippling shortages of critical medical equipment threatened to overwhelm the NHS’s ability to handle the crisis.

Arguably the most significant of the responses to this in terms of sheer scale, ambition and impact is Ventilator Challenge UK, a consortium of various companies including aerospace manufacturers and medical technology firms who worked together to rapidly ramp up the production of the ventilators required to treat those most severely affected by the virus.

For much of last year, Inspiration Healthcare Ltd was involved with Ventilator Challenge UK. This was mainly in terms of regulatory support and a ventilator support contract for all of the newly manufactured ventilators.

The engineering community continues, rightly, to take huge pride in what we did.  Last week our achievements were recognised in the British Engineering Excellence Awards where the Ventilator Challenge UK Consortium was given a Special Award for Design Engineering.

The achievements of Ventilator Challenge UK are best summed up by its leader Dick Elsy, who said: “What Ventilator Challenge UK has achieved in the space of twelve weeks is nothing short of incredible, creating and producing an approved product and setting up production facilities on this scale would normally take years.”  

Inspiration Healthcare Group is proud to have played even a small part in such a momentous and important challenge and pleased to be involved in helping Ventilator Challenge UK help the NHS in saving the lives of so many people during this time.

In a statement, Neil Campbell, Inspiration Healthcare Group’s chief executive officer commented: “As a supplier of medical equipment it was great to be involved with such a prestigious group of manufacturing and engineering companies showing everyone can work together to a common goal”.