In response to the government’s request for help, Dyson has announced it is developing a brand new type of ventilator for the NHS to assist with the fight against the coronavirus, reports Forbes.
The company, headed by British inventor Sir James Dyson, said in a statement it had been working with The Technology Partnership, a medical company based in Cambridge, to develop a “meaningful and timely response”.
“This is a highly complex project being undertaken in an extremely challenging timeframe,” it added. “We are conducting a fully regulated medical device development, including testing in the laboratory and humans, and we are scaling up for volume.”
Industry insiders, however, have suggested that Dyson’s approach to developing a new model will take too long. A consortium of over a dozen companies has aimed to build ventilators based on two already existing designs.
Normally, it would take two to three years for the design of a new ventilator, and there is concern that the NHS will run out of equipment within a few weeks.
“Recreating established prototypes is likely to be a faster way to deal with the immediate demand,” Dr Marion Hersh, senior lecturer in biomedical engineering at the University of Glasgow, told the BBC.
“They may not have to go through all the regulatory hoops, but regulation will still need to be done properly. However, there could be value in more than one option in the slightly longer term.”
Make UK, the manufacturing trade organisation had suggested that Dyson might play a more integral role by assisting to source hard-to-get components that others could use.
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