Hospital supply analysed in response to the pandemic

Carl-Magnus von Behr, a PhD student at the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) at the University of Cambridge, Oliver Lambson, co-founder of a carbon fibre electric guitar start-up, Rubato Guitars, Moritz Meyer zu Köcker, Logistics project manager at MAN Trucks and Bus and a recent MPhil graduate in Industrial Systems, Manufacture, and Management from the University of Cambridge, and Tom Ridgman, who formerly delivered the latter MPhil course at the IfM, discuss a collaborative project to determine whether the hospital oxygen (O2) infrastructure in the UK had sufficient capacity to supply the rapidly rising number of COVID-19 patients.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust contacted the Institute for Manufacturing, (part of the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering) for help in setting up PPE supply chains. This led to a much wider collaboration, including three teams of postgraduate volunteers stepping forward. One of the projects identified was to determine whether the hospital oxygen (O2) infrastructure had sufficient capacity to supply the rapidly rising number of COVID-19 patients.

At the early stages of the pandemic, there was a strong focus on the need for extra ventilator capacity, but much less on whether hospitals had sufficient infrastructure to supply the additional O2 capacity. During the build-up to the UK’s first COVID-19 peak in April 2020, several NHS Trusts experienced challenges with their O2 supply by exceeding the infrastructure’s designed maximum flow rate. 1 NHS England responded with an Estates and Facilities Alert on the 31 March, 2 suggesting close monitoring of the O2 supply system to prevent potentially catastrophic system failures due to capacity overloads. Prior to the pandemic, the largest CUH hospital, Addenbrooke’s, had 1,000 inpatient beds, including 45 for intensive care. The base case planning for the pandemic required a maximum of 44 ICU and 125 non-ICU beds. With many patients requiring oxygen treatment, the reasonable worst case admission plan would have been at least four times greater.