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Are you doing this off your own back or is this your business? It's epic either way.
I assume that it's still massively more expensive to print these as you're doing than it is to get them flown in from the usual suppliers in China(?). Would this ever become a method that someone like a hospital would use - having a room full of printers spitting out 'NICE approved' prints?
Its a crowd sourced initiative so its off my own back. Edit: It was a company that sparked it off originaly, Prusa in the Czech Republic came up with the design for use in their health system.
Its a really slow, unhygienic and expensive way of doing things. Its a total guess but I assume that the usual suppliers in China are in very high demand at the moment. Perhaps @dubtap has some insight into how trusts normally order PPE, its not something I have been involved with before.
Stonehedge-
Every Trust has a procurement team who manage ordering, supply delivery and storage of products in the hospital. Routine items are supplied via NHS Supply Chain from a national catalogue so if a hospital carries 2 weeks of stock on average they would have a weekly delivery of a weeks stock so that there was always a local buffer to prevent any chance of stocks running out.
Its all more complicated than that but the principle is that if hospitals have a buffer and NHSSC also has a buffer then there is a lot of resilience in the system if a supplier has production problems.What this system can't handle is demand suddenly increasing by 10000% for something usually used very rarely where local and national supply chain stocks would be limited which is why pandemic stocks are held so there is resilience nationally. As mentioned upthread the pandemic stocks expected a flu virus so gowns weren't stockpiled.
So now the whole world is chasing supplies of things that simply aren't in stock or are weeks/months away from manufacturers being able to scale up for sustained demand.
dubtap
Are you doing this off your own back or is this your business? It's epic either way.
I assume that it's still massively more expensive to print these as you're doing than it is to get them flown in from the usual suppliers in China(?). Would this ever become a method that someone like a hospital would use - having a room full of printers spitting out 'NICE approved' prints?