The new children’s hospital located on a shared campus with St. James’s Hospital, Dublin will bring together the three existing children’s hospitals in a modern custom designed building to deliver the best care and treatments for Ireland’s sickest children. The three existing children’s hospitals at Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght will move to the new site which is almost 85 per cent complete.

With an expected cost of close to €2 Billion the new children’s hospital will be Ireland’s first public digital hospital. The hospital offers huge potential for partnering with Medtronic Patient Monitoring products with a spend of in excess €1 Million on SPO2 Sensors annually. The current sites are also prolific users of BIS and INVOS technology.

Sam Ajizian‘s visit was in follow up to recent online presentations bringing key clinicians and personnel up to date with Nellcor OxiMax technology and offering them insights into the future product developments. Sam met with the Heads of Anaesthetics at Temple Street Children’s University Hospital and CHI Crumlin as well as Intensivists and Clinical Engineering Teams.

Air Ambulance Northern Ireland, the charity that provides a lifesaving Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) with its partners at the NI Ambulance Service. HEMS responds to serious trauma and medical emergencies across Northern Ireland. The helicopter has the call sign Helimed 23 and carries the McGrath MAC on all its flights to assist the doctors in maintaining the patients’ airways.  The McGrath MAC is central to all training and Ronnie Patterson our Product Specialist in Northern Ireland is always on hand to support product education and training.

Hosted by Dr John O’Flynn and Dr Bill Walsh from Anaesthesiology Department, CHI at Temple Street. There were many excellent scientific contributions, but the highlight was Dr Ann-Marie Crowe an Irish Doctor and Dr Stefania Franzini both working in Anaesthesia and paediatric intensive care at the Hopital Necker Enfants Malades, Paris. They stressed the importance of using INVOS and utilising dual site monitoring protocol as standard. Anita Vaughan said ‘it was fantastic to discuss optimal cerebral and somatic near infrared spectroscopy with so many of the attendees’.

Anita Vaughan and Healthcare Team attended the Irish Society of Endoscopy Nurses conference in November. One of the key papers presented was on the importance of capnography in the procedural sedation and GI spaces and there was a huge interest. Following on from the recent Addenbrookes study it generated significant leads which the team who are following up with trails of the Capnostream commenced at key Endoscopy Centres including The Mater University Hospital and St James’s Hospital.

The standout win for The McGrath MAC in December was the conversion of our last existing non-user of McGrath MAC in Ireland, Bons Secours Private Hospital Cork. Bon Secours Health System Cork is Ireland’s largest private hospital, and it is also one of the largest private hospitals in Europe. The Hospital has more than 300 beds. They employ more than 1,000 staff and admit about 35,000 patients every year.

It is a general hospital providing an extensive range of medical and surgical specialties for adults and children. It has 10 Operating Rooms. The sale means that we have McGrath MACs in every single hospital on the Island of Ireland, with McGrath MAC as the standard of care for ‘first-attempt success of airway intubation’. It is no longer only used as a ‘difficult airway intubation’. The hospital purchased an initial four handles with more are on the way. Congratulations to Emer O’Sullivan our Product Specialist in Cork for this great achievement.

Dr Phil MacDonald holding Irma, a 1 year old with a unilateral cleft lip.

After a very successful first clinical insertion of the Chameleon™ PTA balloon catheter at Galway University Hospital, Merlin Park by Consultant Radiologist Dr Declan Sheppard, the first in the UK and Ireland, Medtronic EMEA / Mozarc invited Susan Corcoran, Product Specialist to present to their European Renal Care Solutions team on the process she followed for the sale and education of the clinical staff at this important university hospital. Susan has also presented the Chameleon™ PTA balloon catheter to the Southern Radiology Society in Ireland with expected new revenue as a result of current trials.