UCL welcomes UK Government order for 10,000 breathing aids

UCL welcomes news that the Government has ordered 10,000 breathing aids, developed by engineers at UCL and Formula One and clinicians at UCLH, which will be delivered to hospitals across the country over the next 15 days. The announcement, made tonight by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove, is a positive step in delivering much-needed breathing aids to the NHS to help tackle Covid-19. Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) devices have been used extensively in China and Italy to help patients with Covid-19 breathe more easily but are in short supply in UK hospitals. Engineers at UCL and Mercedes-AMG HPP, together with clinicians at UCLH, worked round the clock to reverse engineer a CPAP device that could be rapidly manufactured and delivered to NHS hospitals ahead of a predicted surge in hospital admissions. The device they produced, called UCL-Ventura, gained regulatory approval last week and the Government has now placed an order for 10,000. The team are currently conducting patient evaluations at UCLH and will also soon start these at sister hospitals. Providing the patient evaluations are successful, the team will start mass production of CPAP devices by the beginning of next week for distribution across the NHS hospital network.