£40 pop-up tent could protect NHS workers treating coronavirus patients

A £40 pop-up tent designed by a retired British athlete could be a potential ‘game changer’ for NHS staff battling the coronavirus.

Matthew Campbell-Hill has invented a miniatutre isolation tent that takes about 20 seconds to fit over a patient and gives medical staff a greater feeling of safety.

Campbell-Hill, a former wheelchair fencer and senior fellow in novel medical technologies at the University of Birmingham, has taken his design from the drawing board to production in less than a week.

The new shields could be a ‘game changer for health workers who are currently adding to the list of casualties of the pandemic, simply by doing their jobs,’ he said.

They could also allow families to be with their loved ones and to say goodbye during their final moments.

The tents have been designed to significantly reduce care staff coming into contact with the virus and feature slits to allow medical professionals to fit their hands through when treating a patient.

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Mr Campbell-Hill said: ‘I had a call from anaesthetist Dr Egidio da Silva at Birmingham’s Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, who was worried about his staff and had seen a doctor in Taiwan using a Perspex box over a patient and wondered if I might be able to come up with a similar solution.

‘I was worried the box had sharp edges, was heavy, hard to clean and expensive to produce. I spent the next couple of hours working on a design, which would be lightweight, disposable, see-through and could be deployed quickly.

‘I came up with the miniature isolation tent, which tucks in to give a better seal around the patient and has slits in the PVC, rather than open holes in solid plastic, to make it even safer.’

A GoFundMe campaign has been created to provide the NHS with 10,000 tents with the money raised going to the manufacturing and delivery of the devices.

The team is working for free to get the products out.

Campbell-Hill added: ‘They are not a PPE replacement, they are an additional, disposable barrier, which can remain with the patient for multiple treatments and could be a game-changer in treating infections which are based in the respiratory system.

‘We hope they could be used in hospitals, as well as GP surgeries, by paramedics, and even at dentists and potentially hairdressing salons.’

‘The government and NHS procurement are overwhelmed so we are focusing on donating as many of these as we can to the NHS.

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