In March 2020, in response to the UK Government’s Ventilator Challenge, students, academic engineers and medics at Oxford and King’s College London built a completely new, safe, simple and scalable ventilator from scratch in a week. This amazing team with IBME students, staff and academics playing key roles was forged during intense round-the-clock work in the first wave and has developed through to OxVent Limited, the social venture, today.
The OxVent rapidly deployable and scalable low-cost mechanical ventilator was recognised as one of the best innovations of 2020 by the Institute of Engineering and Technology with the prize for the ‘Small Idea, Big Impact: Global Challenge' category of the E&T Innovation Awards. The OxVent collaboration of Oxford, KCL and Smith+Nephew was also Joint Winner of the Healthcare and Medical - Covid response category in The Engineer Magazine’s 2020 Collaborate to Innovate awards.
OxVent Limited is a social venture spinout from the University of Oxford and King’s College London. It aims to make Low and Middle Income Countries more self-sufficient in healthcare by supporting their own medical ventilator industries with manufacturing, regulatory approvals and post-market surveillance as well as new product design. This will avoid the common scenario of expensive medical equipment provided as aid being unused or discarded because of a lack of maintenance and spare parts. The company is established near Oxford with warehousing, pilot manufacturing and development facilities and is working on an accelerated program to establish its own quality and regulatory approvals.
OxVent’s manufacturing deal with JRG Healthcare was part of HM Government’s announcement on trade with India in May 2021.
Oxvent
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