The UK Ventilator Challenge – a developer’s story

Rob Morgan and Carl Hewett took part in the MD +DI virtual event series How the MedTech Industry can respond in a crisis by hosting a webinar; The UK Ventilator Challenge – a developer’s story.

The webinar discussed the UK's Ventilator Challenge in response to the COVID-19 crisis and Sagentia’s efforts in particular. Sagentia was selected by the UK Government to develop a new ventilator and did so in under 7 weeks. In the webinar Rob and Carl outline the development path and describe the highly challenging development environment; the extreme conflicts in the supply chain, employee social distancing, and limited access to clinicians. The crisis revealed new ways of collaboration both with supply chain partners and other development companies who are normally viewed as competitors. In addition the circumstances led to  an expedited regulatory pathway balancing the risk:benefit of rapidly developed devices. Much was learned throughout the product development process and we share many of these learnings in the webinar.

We thank all who attended and those who joined in by asking some questions. Due to time restrictions and a wealth of questions we were unable to answer them all on the day but have published a selection of the questions and answers here.