HERSILL | NEWS | EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS | JUNE 2022
The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAI) has awarded the “Academiae Dilecta” prize to Hersill for his contribution to the fight against COVID-19. The Awards Commission considered that “the performance of our company has been vital in developing and launching products to meet the most critical moments during the coronavirus pandemic.”
At the very beginning of the pandemic, it was Hersill who had a high-performance transport ventilator (Vitae 40) that could be decisive in treating patients, especially at a time of serious shortage of this type of equipment essential for people with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), one of the main complications presented by COVID-19. And so, Hersill managed to multiply the production of the Vitae 40 tenfold in nine weeks to manufacture 5,100 ventilators. These were made available to hospitals and hospitalization points set up to serve thousands of people with COVID-19, thanks to collaboration with the Administration, the Ministries of Health and Industry, hospitals and other institutions.
The RAI Awards Commission understands that “Hersill has been able to grasp the opportunity presented magnificently at the engineering level and currently, they not only sell to Spain, but also export their respirators to many countries, mainly South America, Asia and North Africa.”
The president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Antonio Colino, presented the award to Carlos Martínez, director of R & D at Hersill. “We are honoured to receive this award, which recognises a joint effort, not only by Hersill and its workers, but by many individuals, hospitals and institutions who have done their best to make solutions to deal with the virus available to healthcare professionals and patients”, he said.
“Two of the main pillars on which Hersill is based are research and innovation, with the aim of positioning ourselves and staying at the forefront of technologies, allowing us to compete with the industry in the sector internationally”, he said. The company’s R & D & I department is made up of a multidisciplinary team, consisting of engineers with expertise in healthcare technology and medical doctors, and has collaborative agreements with hospitals and the University. “We are also working to maintain and expand our manufacturing capabilities, with state-of-the-art in-house machining systems to be able to produce the components needed to manufacture the equipment at our facilities”, he says.
