Loanpad staff making breathing aids during pandemic
Peer-to-peer platform Loanpad has revealed that two of its staff members have joined a team of engineers to develop new breathing aids for the NHS, as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
Chief technology officer Jamie Robinson and lead software engineer Alex Blakesley are working alongside engineers from Mercedes F1, University College London (UCL) and University College London Hospitals (UCLH) to create a breathing device known as a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) flow generator.
The CPAP flow generators can provide the patient with oxygen enriched air at a slightly higher pressure than normal, which keeps the airways open, enabling them to breathe more easily.
“Time was not on our side,” said Blakesley. “So we agreed to have a finished design for the device within 48 hours.
“To do so, we reverse-engineered an old design, instead of trying to develop a new one, which meant that many of the necessary permissions were already in place, saving valuable time.”
Read more: How are P2P lenders responding to the coronavirus pandemic?
Robinson added that “the team completely redesigned an existing CPAP device and had the first prototypes produced for hospital testing within three days!”
If the device receives approval by doctors in the coming days, the team could facilitate production of 1,000 devices per day within a week.
A Loanpad spokesperson said that the company is proud of Robinson and Blakesley and thanked them “for achieving so much on behalf of the NHS in such a short space of time.”
Loanpad is not the only P2P platform offering its help during the pandemic lockdown.
Yesterday Crowd2Fund announced a fee waiver for all NHS-employed investors. Meanwhile several platforms have offered borrowers payment holidays and access to government support.
Read more: The quandary facing P2P lenders and borrower payment holidays