Medtronic continues to make progress in increasing ventilator production worldwide. The company has more than tripled its capacity to manufacture and supply ventilators in response to the urgent needs of patients and healthcare systems across the globe confronting COVID-19. Medtronic also shared one of its ventilation design specifications to help accelerate efforts to increase global ventilator production.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, GE Healthcare built and deployed a new Hospital Infectious Disease decision-support application for Humber River Hospital’s Command Centre in under 10 days to support the hospitals management of COVID-19 patients.
The application combines decision makers with real-time information, enabling Humber hospital to more precisely manage bed capacity and staff assignments and predict ICU admissions based on hospital defined patient early warning scores and the rate of decline during this crucial time when ICU resources are limited.
Stryker has the first system approved by Health Canada to sterilize N95 masks for reuse, allowing front line workers to use one mask up to three times. Hospitals across the country are receiving the Sterizone VP4 technology and will be able to sterilize almost 12 million masks per year, resulting in more than 36 million uses of masks.
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and specifically N95 masks are essential for healthcare workers and have limited supply in Canada, making it important to find creative ways to increase supply and maximize use.
After taking the initiative to start testing their existing Sterizone VP4 sterilizer on N95 masks in March, in early April the company’s Quebec subsidiary, TS03, received approval from Health Canada for this new use in only two days after submitting.
Mississauga-based Microbix Biosystems Inc. created a quality assessment product (QAP™) to help ensure the accuracy of COVID-19 disease testing.
By creating this unique product, Microbix is contributing to the development of new methods and improved methods for SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) detection and is helping to improve the accuracy of existing protocols by providing reliable, whole-genome validation/verification and training samples.
The product is now available in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.
Philips has ramped up the production of hospital ventilators and plans to double production to achieve a fourfold increase by the third quarter of 2020. The company is mobilizing its global supplier network to step up support and production in this extraordinary situation.
Handheld and portable ultrasound solutions in particular have become valuable tools for clinicians treating COVID-19 patients due to their imaging capabilities, portability and ease of disinfection.
Philips ultrasound solutions have been approved in various markets for the management of COVID-19-related lung and cardiac complications, including in Canada.
Biomérieux donated its reagent product formula to the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory, so that Canada will be able to rapidly produce more tests for COVID-19.
This reagent is used in the first stage of test analysis that in which the biological material from the patient—the DNA—is separated from the genetic material specific to the virus.
Abbott received Health Canada authorization under the COVID-19 Interim Order for the ARCHITECT SARS-CoV-2 IgG test, a laboratory-based serology blood test for the detection of the antibody, IgG, that identifies if a person has had the new coronavirus (COVID-19).
Antibody testing is an important next step to tell if someone has been previously infected. It will provide more understanding of the virus including how long antibodies stay in the body and if they provide immunity. This type of knowledge could help support the development of treatments and vaccines. This antibody test is in addition to Abbott’s COVID-19 tests in Canada that are being used on its m2000™ molecular laboratory system.
Federal Procurement Minister Anita Anand announced in June that a contract is now in place to buy 140,000 serology test kits from Abbott Laboratories. These supplies are critical to ensuring Canada has the supplies needed to conduct testing and track the COVID19 virus.
As one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in Canada, Cardinal has been working with urgency to support the increased demand for these critical products through the following actions: Proactively placing all PPE on allocation in January and lifted inventory in anticipation of increased demand, aggressively exploring and evaluating additional suppliers—domestically and internationally to gain access to pandemic products (without compromising quality standards), entering a new manufacturing agreement to bolster its supply of masks, and partnering with Health Canada on requirements for PPE licensing that may allow temporary access to new pandemic products from international manufacturers.
Cardinal received an e-mail late Saturday night before Easter from Public Service and Procurement Canada asking them to see if they could help secure testing swabs. By the end of the day on Sunday, they had found swabs that worked and we delivered them early the next week.
Additionally, Cardinal helped set up a pop-up hospital in Quebec in preparation for the pandemic and in partnership with the Quebec Ministry of Health, the company developed a process that would support their efforts to effectively allocate PPE items to the designated areas of need in the province ensuring health care workers and their patients were protected.
Toraymyxin® is a treatment for patients with endotoxic septic shock who are unresponsive to conventional therapies.
The Interim Order allows the use of PMX to treat COVID-19 patients, particularly those with respiratory difficulties, in the presence of low blood pressure due to endotoxemia.
Toraymyxin has been used in this and previous viral pandemics [H1N1] and showed improvement in chest x-ray results and lung function, and successful wean from mechanical ventilation.
Ventilators for Canadians (V4C), a consortium of Canadian entrepreneurs, has partnered with Baylis Medical, a Canadian-based medical device company specializing in cardiology and spine, to manufacture ventilators for hospitals across Canada.
The Baylis V4C–560 ventilator is based on Medtronic’s Puritan BennettTM 560 ventilator design, for which the intellectual property was made publicly available by the company. Medtronic has also provided Baylis with engineering support and assisted with licensing of the Baylis V4C-560 ventilator in Canada.
On June 17, V4C announced that it had received a Health Canada licence for this device, which means the manufacturing of the first 10,000-ventilator order can begin with the first shipment shortly after that.
