Loughborough University London colleagues also worked with Hobs 3D to create masks for healthcare workers after spotting a request (on Twitter) from Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust as they urgently needed visors to protect workers in their Mental Health isolation wards.
Teams and individuals across the University are also supporting the national effort to increase testing for the virus and the analysis of swab samples.
Professor Mark Lewis, Dean of the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, is working closely with the Government to identify resources, equipment and skilled personnel at Loughborough to support the implementation of COVID-19 testing centres across the UK.
This includes the loaning of equipment to organisations such as Randox Biosciences, who are setting up testing facilities to ramp up the country’s fight against the virus.
The School have also provided the National Biosample Centre with protective gear and equipment supplies to support their work in analysing swab samples, to determine whether COVID-19 is present.
Professor Lewis and colleagues from the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine (NCSEM) have also been assisting with keeping NHS clinics open where needed to ensure that important healthcare activities still go ahead.
Expert advice
Loughborough University experts have also been sharing their expertise to help healthcare workers and ensure safe practice.
In order to support manufacturers in creating ventilators that work as intended and staff can understand and operate effectively and safely, the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors published national guidance on usability and testing of rapidly manufactured ventilators, to which human factors colleagues within the School of Design and Creative Arts contributed.
Professor Sue Hignett is leading a dedicated panel that has been established to directly advise on how best to design the machines.
The panel is also working with the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (FCIM) to produce the ventilator usability testing protocol.