County Derry seating company joins the fight against COVID-19

The aerosol box which can be used by doctors when venitalting patients

Seating Matters, a clinical, therapeutic seating company, have teamed up with other local companies Plastic Promotions, McAuley Engineering and Hutchinson Engineering to help in the manufacture of the products on a not-for-profit basis.

Martin Tierney, Director at Seating Matters said “We are not here to make this a business, we are here to try and help the front-line care givers and clinicians as best we can.”

The products include a transparent aerosol box, produced by Plastic Promotions, which will allow anaesthetists to safely perform intubation and extubation procedures on Covid-19 positive patients, reducing the likelihood of infection for these clinicians.

A design from Taiwan was expanded on by a group of anaesthetists with the Seating Matters design team and Plastic Promotions. The design is open to the world to expand further for the benefit of the healthcare sector.

This device for anaesthetists is being sold at a not-for-profit basis.

In addition, McAuley Engineering and Hutchinson Engineering have worked with Seating Matters to create the ‘Rapid Med-Bed’, designed to meet the urgent need for simple beds to treat Coronavirus patients.

These beds have a collapsible design, can be multi-stacked for transportation and thousands can be produced in short lead times.

“We are not the heroes,” said Mr Tierney. “We are proud to have played a part in helping our healthcare workers, the people who get up in the morning, leave their families and put themselves in harm’s way in order to provide care for you and I.”

Jonathan McAuley, Managing Director, McAuley Engineering said: ‘We as a company are delighted to be able to use the skills our employees have built up over many years in assisting with the manufacture of these hospital beds. As we see our healthcare workers battle against the COVID 19 virus, it’s important that companies like ourselves do whatever we can to provide the back up support they need.”

Mark Hutchinson of Hutchinson Engineering, added: “We’re very proud to be a part of this project. We’re delighted to be able to help and support the healthcare system at this time.”

Mark Irvine, of Plastic Promotions, said: “We are very proud to be able to produce what is potentially a life-saving product for frontline workers in the health sector at these troubling times.”