Covid 19 is a virus that doesn’t play by the rules. There is no vaccine. There is no therapeutic treatment or medicine. Large countries like China that have huge populations are managing to control it effectively. Smaller European countries that had a 2 month start, have failed to do this. Because it doesn’t play by the rules, to find a solution, we have to use the same tactic.  

Background

Quantum Air Technology is a specialist high containment company that has spent years working on innovative solutions for protecting medical and military personnel from biological and chemical threats. We generally don’t design anything that already exists – we like to innovate.

So that’s what we’ve done with this pandemic and the innovative result to this is Medic-Safe. This is PPE worn by the patient to protect the medics.

Current Solutions

Prof Chris Whitty said himself at the 5pm government briefing yesterday (13th April 2020) that PPE/masks were effective at stopping to spread the virus, but not very good at stopping receiving it. So, we give the masks to the medics but not the patients? Then when medics get infected we just order more masks? Nice and traditional but time to think outside the box.

Applied Technology

Medic-Safe takes the containment technology that protects the lab technicians testing infected samples, and repurposes this for the medics treating far more infectious patients. The device uses a non-invasive enclosure over the patient’s head from which air is extracted. That air is highly efficiently filtered then returned to the ward as extremely clean, virus-free air. Virtually nothing can escape the neck aperture at the front due to the air inflow barrier. If we are asked to quantify this level of protection, we can draw on existing European standards for microbiological safety cabinets such as : EN12469. These standards would suggest that if we design for the correct air velocities, the protection factor will be 100,000. This compares to a protection factor of just 1 if the patient isn’t using Medic-Safe.

Progress So far

We have completed all the Government portal questionnaires associated with innovations for PPE to fight Covid19. Thankfully, we are now getting positive responses from Government and non-Government agencies. We hope together we will find a plan to roll this out UK-wide so that we can start to use new technology to safeguard medics in the health sector and others.

In just 3 weeks we have gone from concept to a production unit validated by testing and with a full technical specification. This unit is now immediately available for any Government/NHS agency to test, so that we can clear the way to large volume production.