MEDICAL EQUIPMENT SUPPLY
Staff go ‘above and beyond’ in their efforts to contribute
This year’s coronavirus outbreak has seen many organisations operating in the healthcare sphere – and particularly suppliers, turn their hand to non- ‘run-of-the’ mill activity as part of the wider UK effort to reduce infection rates and provide COVID-19 patients with optimal care. One of several UK manufacturers to have harnessed its considerable engineering expertise to produce ventilator components outside its normal scope and, equally, to provide guidance and advice to those who have needed it, is Brandon Medical. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, recently spoke with the company’s Executive Chairman, Graeme Hall, and Strategic Programme manager, Paul Grainger, to find out how the company has lent an expert hand, while continuing to undertake its normal day-to-day manufacturing activities and fulfilling existing orders promptly.
Leeds-headquartered Brandon Medical is a multi-award-winning UK-based medical technology company with 74 years’ healthcare experience. A manufacturer, installer, and maintainer of medical technology products, its products and systems are supplied not only to hospitals and other healthcare facilities all over the UK, but also to such facilities worldwide, through an extensive distributor network. Its portfolio – much of the equipment is developed and designed ‘in-house’ – includes hospital, operating theatre, and minor surgical lighting, sophisticated medical audio-visual systems and telemedicine solutions, uninterruptible power supplies, and isolated power supplies. Brandon Medical undertakes installation and commissioning work in hospitals both in the UK and overseas, offers servicing on all supplied systems, and says it is ‘an acknowledged expert’ in medical lighting, medical power and control systems, and medical video and medical AV systems, ‘with a unique expertise in providing integrated solutions’.
The company is equally at home supplying a range of operating lights or pendants for a new operating theatre, or acting as a true turnkey supplier, planning, supplying, and installing, a complete package of operating theatre equipment for a hospital, complemented, in many cases, by a full associated suite of audio/video and/or telemedicine equipment. The latter is typically used to enable surgeons undertaking specialist procedures to share audio and video footage of live or recorded operations either with counterparts elsewhere within the hospital, or at external sites, or to aid the training of upcoming surgeons.
Biggest names in healthcare provision The medical technology specialist works with some of the UK and the world’s biggest names in public and private
62 Health Estate Journal August 2020
Service and maintenance staff from Brandon working during the COVID-19 outbreak.
healthcare. Proud of its in-house British engineering expertise, its goal is always to provide a fast, efficient, and responsive service to its healthcare provider customers, who are themselves often under tight time pressures to get medical premises completed, and new equipment installed, to meet rising clinical demand. While Brandon could not have predicted how severe an impact the coronavirus outbreak would have in the UK, nor the pressure it would put on the NHS, Graeme Hall explained when we spoke by phone in early June that the company had had good planning for the pandemic in place from as early as mid-February – largely as result of its discussions with distributors and customers in the Far East, who were able to report to it on the early impact of COVID-19, and the lessons they were learning. Such was its preparedness and confidence both in its own manufacturing capabilities, and in its established supply chain, that Brandon made clear early in
the pandemic that it would be aiming for ‘business as usual’, and did not expect any significant disruption to its ability to supply its healthcare customers promptly. What it could not have anticipated, however, was how it would turn its hand to manufacturing a number of components considerably outside its normal scope for machinery and medical equipment needed to treat COVID-19. Graeme Hall said he believed its ability to do this is testament both to its technical engineering expertise and adaptability, and to the commitment and dedication of its staff.
Playing its part
He explained: “I think that, like many companies, when the coronavirus crisis hit, we sought to do something different to our normal activities, to try to help where can with the skills and resources we possess. Paul Grainger, our Strategic Programme manager, who is with me today, is an expert in medical pendant
©Monty Rakusen
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