University of Limerick delivers 100,000 visors to protect health workers amid Covid-19

100,000 face visors are being delivered to the HSE after University of Limerick designed them using a 3-D printer.

The project was carried out in conjunction with University Hospital Limerick and also includes the refinement of a shield used during patient intubation and ventilation.

The designs will help to protect front-line staff and increase the amount of treatments in hospitals.

In less than two weeks, the team designed solutions to three critical clinical challenges facing clinicians due to the pandemic.

These include capacity to manufacture 100,000 face visors for HSE front-line staff, refinement of a shield concept to protect anaesthesiologists during patient intubation for ventilation, and design of adaptors for respiratory technologies to undergo a clinical trial.

The first batch of visors were delivered to UHL yesterday, while the shield box and adaptors are about to be put into practice. The face visors are in Limerick green and say ‘The Limerick Visor: Front Line Heroes’.

“There has been a phenomenal collaborative effort to deliver these solutions in a very short timeframe,” explained Professor Leonard O’Sullivan, of UL’s School of Design and the Health Research Institute based at UL.

Professor Leonard O'Sullivan from UL says other colleges could also help to increase the supply chain of personal protective equipment.

Following a request from Professor Paul Burke, Chief Academic Officer at UL Hospitals Group and Vice Dean of Health Sciences at UL, academics and clinicians at the Rapid Innovation Unit at UL worked to design and manufacture solutions where doctors had identified potential shortages of equipment should Covid-19 cases surge.

Professor O’Sullivan noted that brothers Aidan and Kevin O’Sullivan, research fellows at UL, had “pulled out all the stops to lead the team to deliver these rapid response solutions for the hospital”.

Professor O’Sullivan explained the local companies had enabled capacity to manufacture up to 5,000 visors a day.

“The visors can be for multiple use but it is likely also be for single use given the current circumstances,” he explained.

The normal production time on a project like this would take months, but it was done in just nine days. This was accomplished through the local companies working very intensively together, Professor O’Sullivan said.

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