Ventilator Challenge UK

There's good criticism and then there's bad criticism about ventilators

The UK's purchase of ventilators for the Covid pandemic is once more on the news. It seems a number of units purchased by the UK are now being sold at a fraction of the price via online auctions. Jo Maughan from the Good Law Project is quoted saying

Public Procurement

#ventilatorgate: end of May update

It is now the end of May and I think the time has come for one final update on #ventilatorgate. Well, at least until the public inquiry into this mess gets in full swing. As of May 19th only 13,000 ventilators were available in the NHS, an increase of

Public Procurement

#Ventilatorgate: Mid-May update

I haven't had much time to look into #ventilatorgate in the past couple of weeks, but there was an interesting development last Friday with an update from the Cabinet Office. On this update we found out that: 1. The UK received 150 ventilators from Sweden in the first

Public Procurement

#ventilatorgate: Early May update

It is now early May and over the last few days a small number of news pieces about the process. NBC has one about how some of the Chinese ventilators could kill patients if deployed in hospitals. More interestingly, both the FT and The Guardian have broader pieces of the

Public Procurement

#ventilatorgate update: Where's the Dyson ventilator?

It is now a full month after the announcement that Dyson had been handed out a contract for the development of a new ventilator from scratch. In the absence of any recent official update, Dyson itself put out a nice video on April 14th stating that some units had been

Public Procurement

Ventilatorgate: What could the Government have done differently

Albert has once more looked into the sorrow state of the ventilator procurement process and coined an excellent name for the whole saga: #ventilatorgate. I think it is a perfect epitaph for the situation. On his most recent entry he looked into the responses of the Government to the FT

Public Procurement

Government answers to allegations on ventilator process, raising more questions

The Financial Times published a piece last Friday taking aim at the process of sourcing more ventilators for the NHS. The author, Peter Foster, also posted a long twitter thread providing a few more details. The Government answered yesterday with a rebuttal posted on the Gov.uk website. The answer

Public Procurement

More on the UK COVID-19 ventilator procurement saga

I have been waiting to reply to Albert's volley on our ongoing discussion to give time for the dust to settle around the ventilator saga. I think it is fair to say we agree on the fact that the Dyson contract (as well as those for BlueSkies et

Public Procurement

Further reflections on the ventilator saga

One of the benefits of blogging is the opportunity to get feedback quickly from your ideas so that you can reflect upon and refine them. A couple of days ago, Albert was kind enough to address my criticism of the Dyson ventilator contract and that poked me in a good

Public Procurement

Some further reflections on the UK's purchase of ventilators

As mentioned on Friday’s post, the UK did not take part on the joint procurement set up by the European Commission for COVID-19 medical supplies, including that of ventilators. The Government's official response is that there was a miscommunication between the parties and that no invitation to

Public Procurement

Ventilator Challenge UK also obtains order for 10,000 ventilators

A consortium of 20+ industrial, technology and engineering companies has also secured an order from the UK Government for over 10,000 ventilators. Differently from Dyson, Ventilator Challenge UK is basing its improved design on current models that have already been certified by the regulator, so it is anticipated that