STI joins VentilatorChallengeUK

Above: Dick Elsy, Chief Executive, High Value Manufacturing Catapult, leads the VentilatorChallengeUK consortium.
Courtesy HVM Catapult

The consortium is a group of significant UK industrial, technology and engineering businesses from across the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors, that have come together to produce medical ventilators for the UK.

STI reached out to the consortium to offer their assistance following the government’s request for UK manufacturers to help make ventilators for the NHS as part of the response to coronavirus.

STI is a leading advanced technology electronics manufacturer, specialising in safety critical products for high reliability industries. Ventilator production has already started from other sites but STI will expand production capability by building part of the ventilators at their headquarters in Hook, Hampshire from this week.

Simon Best, STI Managing Director, said “We are delighted to join the consortium and step up to meet the challenge to manufacture ventilators in the volumes required to support our extremely brave front line NHS teams, allowing them to keep people alive”.

The VentilatorChallengeUK Consortium is led by Dick Elsy, CEO of High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a group of manufacturing research centres in the UK.

Over the past week the consortium has been working hard to investigate production of a range of ventilator design options to meet a high-level specification for a Rapidly Manufactured Ventilator System (RMVS) developed by clinicians and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

The consortium has evaluated all requirements to design, manufacture, assemble and test components, as well as finished medical ventilators.

Companies in the consortium have now received formal orders from the Government in excess of 10,000 units.

The consortium will now accelerate production of an agreed new design, based on existing technologies, which can be assembled from materials and parts in current production. The device combines existing proven clinical equipment and is the clinicians’ first choice for the RMVS.

The regulator has been involved throughout and we anticipate a straightforward and very prompt regulatory sign off after the final audit.

The consortium is now working at full speed to take the necessary steps in order to increase production of this design. Production will begin this week.

STI is a specialist Contract Electronics Manufacturer (CEM), serving world-class customers in high-reliability industries by providing electronics design and manufacturing solutions in both printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) and full box-build manufacturing. With headquarters in Hook, Hampshire, the company has 1,000 employees across three manufacturing sites, two in the UK and one in the Philippines, and with supporting offices in Singapore, Australia and USA.