Making ventilators?

[Rosehip10]

Government says wants engineering firms to urgently start making medical equipment. Peston (itv) asks chief executive of rolls Royce (one of few large uk firms who may be able to do something like this rapidly) "has anyone been in touch at all?

Exec "no"

Ok, so Robert Peston asked the CEO of Rolls Royce whether anyone had asked his company to start making medical equipment and he said 'no'. I've got that far. What's the rest of the story?

@viciousjackdaw are you being obtuse or is your head up bojo's bum?

This is a "pressing need" according to Matt Hancock yet no-one is actually doing anything about it.

Depressing but doesn’t surprise me one bit. I don’t trust a word they tell us.
So much for cross party cooperation, who is holding them to account.

It's the weekend...

How do they have the equipment or knowledge to do it? Assuming JCB produce huge machinery and RR are aerospace manufacturers?! I’m confused

It's the weekend

The DHSC should have been procuring ventilators 4 weeks ago when this looked as though it was coming.

Random factories can't just start 'making ventilators'. You have to have a fully set up, audited quality management system in place and jump through quite a few regulatory hoops to make such critical medical equipment.

Indeed there are practical and engineering issues I would imagine. Rolls Royce are probably a reasonable place to at least get advice on. Outside aero work they do lots of precision engineering on stuff like nuclear reactor systems. They will be supplied by many many smaller specialised engineering firms so they could work out what can and can't be done and in what timescales.

Alternatively, they should of pumped money into the nhs to begin with rather than expecting firms to come up with immediate solutions and nhs staff to come out of retirement. It’s fucking bonkers

The government line about ventilators is nonsense and a wonderful piece of misdirection to make people believe that the government are doing something and we can all pull together and get through it. Or if there are not enough it isn't the government's fault it is those companies who would not make them!

They are a specialist item and not many items will be purchased a year. If there are circa 5,000 in the UK now, how many did the NHS buy this year? Even 2,000 would seem a lot because it is hard to believe that they replace 40% of them each year.
No company that does not currently manufacture them is suddenly going to start making them in any time frame that would be useful.
Also do we actually make any in this country? Are they probably not made in China or other countries who might be using them?!

It seems to me to be a nasty, cynical line.

Wonder why people keep "regulations" and "cerification" etc. If you were desperately ill would you prefer a ventilator that helped or one that can't be used as it is waiting the correct paperwork?

As an aside I don't think people fully reaslise that if/When the government acts emergency powers under the civil contingencies act the powers of the state become vast and "normality" is irrelevant.

How do they have the equipment or knowledge to do it?

I’m guessing he wants them to manufacture stainless steel parts for Breas (apparently our only ventilator manufacturer) to assemble. Surely he wouldn’t want some Heath Robinson contraption made from an old carburettor and a couple of spark plugs...

The regulations are there to keep patients and clinicians safe. Rolls Royce (or whoever) can’t just come up with a ventilator design tomorrow and start making it by the end of the week. Ventilators are highly specialised, technical pieces of equipment and every screw, bolt, line of software and bit of silicone tubing is scrutinised, tested, double-tested, controlled and checked to make sure the product is safe. There’s no point in having ‘ventilators’ that kill more people than they help. The idea is utterly ludicrous.

I'm sure it's more that factories like this have the capability and resources to make the parts to spec of actual ventilator manufacturers. It's going to require some knowledge sharing. The companies mentioned employ some of the leading engineers in the world I'm sure it's well within their capabilities.

Its unlikely that any firm could suddenly start making ventilators in time, and not the numbers that would be needed. And even if they could it’s pointless without the intensive care nurses to look after them - bringing back retired nurses won’t cut the mustard I’m afraid!
I did think of the private hospitals though, we have a Nuffield hospital down the road, it’s all single rooms (ideal), and although it doesn’t have an ITU it does have anaesthetic ventilators in the operating theatres.

Wonder why people keep "regulations" and "cerification" etc. If you were desperately ill would you prefer a ventilator that helped or one that can't be used as it is waiting the correct paperwork?

Well, you’re assuming that this unregulated ventilator wouldn’t be actively dangerous. The regulations aren’t there to keep auditors in a job - they are there because people have been killed by defective kit.

Of course in this kind of emergency the risk/benefit analysis would shift somewhat, but we don’t want to find ourselves in a situation where the NHS buys 100 ventilators from LungsRUs that fail because of lack of design qualification.

That ignores all of the companies that state they have been asked. And the fact that it's surprising we do any business with them now.

The whole idea is preposterous, and just illustrates how woefully out of his depth Hancock is.

It doesn't matter if they're capable, if they haven't been asked (and aren't being paid)?

LungsRUs

In a state of emergency (akin to a war) I believe this country should be able to use our collective skills and abilities to put together thousands of ventilators within say several weeks. I mean its not a new bit of kit so the design must already be there.

Also wont China have a shed load of them they are no longer needing?

As an aside I don't think people fully reaslise that if/When the government acts emergency powers under the civil contingencies act the powers of the state become vast and "normality" is irrelevant.

Yes, but those powers don’t override the laws of physics, time and space. If a company doesn’t currently make a product, just being told by the Govt to start making it doesn’t mean they can do it in any meaningful timeframe. If you’re a specialist cardiac surgeon and someone ‘tells’ you to do a kidney operation you can probably give it a good go but I’m sure everyone would prefer the expert to do it.

You know what would alleviate a lot of this worry?

About £350mil/week

Run down your manufacturing base, run down your NHS, get problems...

I have visions of Wallace and grommet cobbling them together in a shed.