Firms team up to make non-profit products in the Covid-19 fight

Clinical, therapeutic seating company, Seating Matters, have designed aerosol boxes and rapid deployment beds in response to the global crisis being faced by the healthcare sector during the coronavirus pandemic.

Seating Matters in Limavady, have teamed up with local companies Plastic Promotions, McAuley Engineering and Hutchinson Engineering to help in the manufacture of these products on a not-for-profit basis to allow the healthcare service to obtain high quality, vital equipment for their staff.

Martin Tierney, Director at Seating Matters said: “We are not here to make this a business, we are here to try and help the front-line care givers and clinicians as best we can.”

The products include a transparent aerosol box, produced by Plastic Promotions, which will allow anaesthetists to safely perform intubation and extubation procedures on Covid-19 positive patients, reducing the likelihood of infection for these clinicians. An open-source design from Taiwan was expanded on by a group of anaesthetists from UHL, Beacon and Galway Hospitals together with the Seating Matters design team and Plastic Promotions and is, once again, open to the world to expand further for the benefit of the healthcare sector.

This device for anaesthetists is being sold at a not-for-profit basis at www.guardmed.org. The open source design has been adopted by organisations in Australia, Canada, Germany, Portugal and the United States and is helping clinicians already.

In addition, McAuley Engineering and Hutchinson Engineering have worked with Seating Matters to create the ‘Rapid Med-Bed’, designed to meet the urgent needs for simple beds to treat Coronavirus (Covid-19) patients. These beds have a collapsible design for rapid deployment, can be multi-stacked for transportation and due to the design and manufacturing process, thousands can be produced in short lead times.

“We are not the heroes,” said Mr Tierney. “We are proud to have played a part in helping our healthcare workers, the people get up in the morning, leave their families and put themselves in harms way in order to provide care for you and I.”

Jonathan McAuley, Managing Director, McAuley Engineering, Ballymoney, said: “We as a company are delighted to be able to use the skills our employees have built up over many years in assisting with the manufacture of this hospital bed. As we see our healthcare workers battle against the COVID 19 virus, it’s important that companies like ourselves do whatever we can to provide the back up support they need.”

Mark Hutchinson from Hutchinson Engineering, Kilrea, continued: “We’re very proud to be a part of this project. We’re delighted to be able to help and support the healthcare system at this time”.

Mark Irvine of Plastic Promotions, Craigavon, added: “We are very proud to be able to produce what is potentially a life-saving product for frontline workers in the health sector at these troubling times.”

For information visit https://www.seatingmatters.com/covid-19-rapid-med-bed

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