Engineering response to COVID-19 webinar on 24 April 2020

The Institution is holding a free webinar to look at the engineering community’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.

•  Find out about webinar and how to register

COVID-19 has taken more than 120,000 lives across the world across the world ;the NHS requires at least another 8,000 ventilators.

Following the announcement that the ventilator Bluesky produced by the Formula One Team project would not be purchased in bulk by the NHS because it was not fit for purpose, it is now more important than ever that engineers come together to work on alternatives.

At the request of the Department of Health and Social Care, the engineering industry is turning its hand to large-scale medical device production and manufacturing to assist the 3,500 clinical engineers that currently make up part of the NHS workforce.

The webinar will cover the engineering efforts that have been made so far and bring together manufacturing experts from across the industry to discuss the best engineering response to the crisis.

The webinar will feature contributions from Helen Meese, a Trustee at the Institution and Vice Chair of the Biomedical Engineering Division.  Helen has been leading the recruitment of volunteer engineers to back up frontline NHS staff at the Nightingale Hospital on the Excel site in London.

Helen will be joined by Sam Turner, Chief Technology Officer, High Value Manufacturing Catapult and who also chairs the Institution’s Digital Engineering and Manufacturing Leadership Group.

The third panellist will be Michael Straughan, Chief Operating Officer, Sunseeker International Ltd

The discussion will be chaired by Dr Jenifer Baxter, Chief Engineer at the Institution.