Never ones to shy away from a challenge, the team at The Royal Mint has developed and manufactured a medical visor to support NHS staff in their current fight against Coronavirus.
In just 48 hours, the talented Engineers at The Royal Mint have developed a successful prototype to help protect frontline care workers, and following successful testing, the first visors are already in use in The Royal Glamorgan Hospital in South Wales. The team began mass manufacturing of the medical visors for the NHS within days providing critical protection for frontline staff.
They are now producing over 10,000 a day!
The team found a rudimentary design for a medical visor online, and began developing high specification prototypes – turning the concept into an approved design in just 48 hours. In addition, The Royal Mint has also been supplying the NHS with other essential PPE equipment from its stores, and offering Project Management support.
The visors were initially made available to Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board Wales, and are now being supplied directly to NHS Wales who are distributing the visors.
Leighton John, Director of Operations for The Royal Mint said: “My sister works for the NHS and it really focuses your mind on the challenges they are facing, and the opportunity we have to support them.
“We knew nothing about medical visors to begin with, but we set our engineers the task of developing essential medical equipment which could be easily made on site – within seven hours they’d created a medical visor, and within 48 hours it was approved for mass manufacture.”
Dr Sharon Hopkins, CEO of Cwm Taf Morgannwg UHB, said: “We are incredibly grateful to The Royal Mint for this work. This equipment will be vitally important for our frontline staff to protect themselves and others as they work to respond to the COVID19 pandemic. It is also an excellent example of teams working collaboratively to provide safer environments for our staff and patients.
“The generosity of organisations such as The Royal Mint as well as our communities has been humbling and I would like to thank everyone for their continued support for our staff and the NHS.”
The Royal Mint has worked with its key suppliers – including Brammer, TJ Morgan and Technical Foam Services– to source the components needed to make the visors.
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