A Good News Story

Not very long ago, Prof. Dennis Douroumis' research group at the Centre for Innovation in Process Engineering and Research (CIPER), University of Greenwich (Medway) was carrying out cutting edge research on 3D printed medical devices using state of the art 3D printers. 

However, the crisis of COVID-19 arrived, with an enormous challenge, and put a halt on much of our everyday lives. This global pandemic has resulted in thousands of COVID-19 infected patients requiring treatment from our front-line medical staff at the NHS. 

To fight the battle against this deadly virus, personal protective equipment (PPE) is an absolute necessity for the nurses and doctors at our hospitals. Several media reported that our NHS was experiencing a serious shortage of PPE and the lives of our front-line workers was at risk.

Right after the lockdown started in the UK, Prof. Dennis arranged a video conference with his research group about this current Covid-19 crisis and he discussed his initiatives with one of his collaborators from St. Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey, UK. He also suggested to his team about the design of a mask and face-visors which can help the frontline NHS workers. His research group took this idea of manufacturing PPE and promptly started working on the design and optimisation of the 3D printing process. It took about two weeks to optimise a complicated 3D printed manufacturing process and source all other consumables for the face mask and visors. 

Till now, 350 pieces of 3D printed PPE have been delivered to the hospital authority and manufacturing is still active to meet future demand. In order to scale up the manufacturing process, Bruce Hassan, a senior technician on the Medway Campus used their 3D printers to full capacity for us to deliver the desired number of face mask and face visors to St Peter’s hospital. 

As the crisis situation is still ongoing, Prof. Douroumis and his team have a plan to provide 3D printed face masks and visors for the PhD students and staff who are planning to return to the campus. This work plan is yet under discussion with Prof. Dennis and Pro-Vice Chancellor. Essentially, 3D printers came with a ray of light to mitigate the shortage of PPE at our NHS and fight against this global pandemic.

to Prof. Dennis Douroumis,

Atabak Tabriz, Uttom Nandi

and Bruce Hassan for all

your fantastic and vital work!!