JMP Solutions Plays a Key Role in Canadian Ventilator Manufacturing Team to Aid in the Ongoing Fight Against COVID-19
June 15, 2020
JMP Solutions is helping in the fight against COVID-19 by contributing its manufacturing and project management expertise towards the production of ventilators for use in Canada. JMP is part of Ventilators for Canadians, a consortium of Canadian manufacturers and solutions providers that recognized early on there was a potential for a shortage of ventilation units, which if realized, would impose a substantial strain on Canadian hospitals. JMP has now partnered with Vexos Inc. to fulfill a contract for the production of 10,000 ventilators for use in Canada.
In light of this pandemic, Canadian manufacturers have made efforts to pivot and adapt their manufacturing processes and capabilities to provide much needed PPE to support our front-line healthcare workers, as well as to provide critical medical hardware, such as ventilators, to support the needs across Canada. The Canadian Government has announced funding to help support manufacturers to re-tool systems and modify plant conditions to manufacture these critical medical devices. However, for the vast majority of manufacturing environments, this extreme pivot poses too great a challenge to accomplish, particularly within the very sensitive time window this virus has imposed. Ventilators for Canadians was borne out of the need to quickly develop an agile team of industry professionals with complementary skills, technical expertise and access to fit for purpose supply chains and manufacturing environments with the sole purpose of building ventilators quickly and without compromise.
As part of the Ventilators for Canadians consortium, JMP has been working closely with an international team of scientists and engineers from Canada, Italy and the United States named the MVM (Mechanical Ventilator Milano) Collaboration, the team responsible for the product engineering, design and testing of the MVM Ventilator. Through a highly cooperative and tireless effort, the global team has been able to bring the MVM Ventilator from concept to FDA approval in a span of just 6 weeks. Accomplishing such a huge task in such a short time is a great testament to the collaborative efforts and complementary skill and resource sharing of laboratories, universities and organizations across Canada and internationally. The team is now preparing to submit for Health Canada approval under the provisions of the Interim Order in regard to medical devices for use in relation to COVID-19.
Another key member of the MVM Collaboration is Vexos Inc, an award-winning electronics manufacturing services provider based in Markham, Ontario. Vexos has recently received a contract from the Government of Canada to manufacture 10,000 MVM Ventilators. JMP has partnered with Vexos to manufacture the mechanical sub-assembly which will then be sent to Vexos for electrical assembly and testing.
“We’re excited to partner with JMP and the international MVM team to bring this ventilator quickly into production to combat the COVID 19 pandemic, were extremely proud of the work by the joint collaboration team and look forward to the hard work ahead to deliver the 10,000 MVM ventilators to the Canadian Government” said Wayne Hawkins, SVP and GM of Vexos, Markham.
Prof. Art McDonald, 2015 Nobel Physics Laureate and Canadian leader for the international MVM collaboration commented “Our Canadian team from Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, TRIUMF, SNOLAB and the McDonald Institute has been very pleased to work with the strong manufacturing teams at JMP and Vexos to bring this new ventilator to market in such a timely way during the world-wide COVID19 crisis.”
Scott Shawyer, President and CEO of JMP Solutions added “We feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to step-up and do our part to support our fellow Canadians during this crisis. I would like to give a heartfelt thank you to the entire MVM Collaboration, the team at Vexos, everyone who has contributed to Ventilators for Canadians, and my team at JMP. One day we will all be very proud of all we have accomplished in such a short period of time.”
