March 20 2020, Toronto – Canada’s Thornhill Medical, a leading innovator in medical technologies, is proud to have joined the national effort to fight COVID-19. The Toronto-based company, founded by researchers and engineers originally from Toronto’s University Health Network, has received a letter of intent from the Canadian federal government as part of Canada’s new plan to mobilize industry to fight COVID-19.
Thornhill Medical is ramping up production of its groundbreaking, proprietary MOVES® SLC™ portable life support and ventilator unit which will support hospitals and health care facilities across the country to deliver much-needed life-saving treatment to patients requiring urgent care.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Navdeep Bains have each cited Thornhill Medical as one of the companies working hard in the fight against COVID-19.
“We are honoured to join the effort to help save lives in these unprecedented circumstances,” explained Thornhill Medical CEO Lesley Gouldie. “Thornhill’s purpose is to produce the best leading-edge medical equipment to save lives, and we are proud to take part in the Canadian government’s fight against COVID-19.”
Thornhill Medical’s MOVES® SLC™ unit
MOVES® SLC™ is a compact portable, self-contained device that provides all of the crucial functions available in a modern intensive care unit (ICU). MOVES® SLC™integrates the functions of a ventilator, generating its own oxygen from the air, a full suite of critical care monitors and suction—all able to run on battery power. This portable ICU provides much needed life-saving capacity, essentially enabling health care providers to maintain uninterrupted ICU-level care anywhere in the hospital, and to continue with the same level of care during transport within the hospital and between hospitals.
“Our MOVES® SLC™ also addresses the challenge of providing the large volumes of oxygen required in COVID-19 treatment even if oxygen supply becomes in short supply,” explains Thornhill Medical co-founder and innovator Dr. Joe Fisher, a world-renowned research scientist who is also Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto and a staff Anesthesiologist at the University Health Network. “My colleagues and I have been working on perfecting this device for 15 years. We are proud of the many lives it has already helped save on battlefields and during natural disasters. The whole team will now throw ourselves into enabling physicians around the world to extend the most sophisticated life support system available to the treatment of their patients at these trying times.”