By: Jim Lahde at The Morning Sun.
They’re doing their part to help the cause and deserve a round of applause. Good people coming together for the good of the world, tough to beat that.
Over
the course of the past week Weidman’s Unified Brands has stepped up to
help fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Unified Brands has created, or
invented depending on how you look at it, a COVID-19 enclosure box that
fits over the heads of patients during the process of intubation, when a
tube is inserted into a patient’s airway to help with breathing.
During
the intubation process the potential for spreading COVID-19 to the
health care workers is at its greatest, thus Unified Brands thought
outside of the box and created a prototype box that would help limit
that potential.
Unified Brands manufactures commercial food
service equipment and is most recognized in the state of Michigan under
Randell (refrigeration) and Avtec (ventilation).
The enclosure box concept was the brainchild of manufacturing engineering manager Brad Heil and his wife Leah.
While
watching a downstate news broadcast earlier this month both saw a
segment dedicated to a collision shop in Riverview named Widener
Collision that was making intubation boxes.
Leah, a registered
nurse at McLaren Central Michigan Hospital, told her husband that the
enclosure boxes were a great idea and might be something to look further
into.
On April 6 the Unified Brands leadership team met and
decided to build a prototype out of polycarbonate Lexan, material which
is used a sneeze guards in the food-service industry. Within three days,
and after some modification, the prototype enclosure box was completed.
As it currently stands Unified Brands has not started
production of its enclosure box and has not marketed it. In terms of
overall numbers it has build only a handful of enclosure boxes so far.
But that’s not the point really.
The
point is Unified Brands stepped up to the plate when its country needed
it and offered up a great idea followed by a potentially great product
that could save lives.
Bravo.
This article is courtesy of The Morning Sun.