Northern Ireland companies answer call to produce ventilators

Under the umbrella of www.inventni.org a network of firms, including several from within the Mid and East Antrim Borough Council area, are pulling out all the stops to answer an urgent call from the Department for the Economy and Invest NI for the Rapidly Manufactured Ventilation Systems (RMVS).

In conjunction with the local Manufacturing Task Force, companies were asked to consider registering on the portal and share their skills by adapting existing technologies or providing part manufacturing of elements such as laser cutting, fabrication, PCB assembly and 3D Printing.

Since late last month, the Invent NI Alliance have been liaising with medics, assisted breathing and medical ventilator specialists, engineers and other groupings working on developing new emergency breathing aids, to design and produce prototype emergency breathing aids.

In parallel, the alliance partners have been developing plans and structures for the manufacture of emergency breathing aids.

Mid and East Antrim councillor Peter Johnston said: “The design will be completely open source and free to other companies who can replicate it elsewhere.

“The team have been working round the clock over the past ten days and have developed a ventilator which we hope goes into production within the next few weeks.

“This is a philanthropic effort and the ventilators will be donated free of charge to medical staff on the front line, while the cost of materials is covered by donations.”