“Consider this a warning order.”
The voice on the other end was from the Pentagon. That was the last thing I’d expected to hear on Saturday morning, March 21st, 2020.
On October 1, 2018, I had happily retired after forty years of Federal service. I had remained engaged with the Naval Sea Systems Command and the Navy Experimental Diving Unit as their one and only Volunteer Scientist Emeritus, until I received that call.
Within 90 minutes, I had been reinstated with full security clearance and told to pack my bags.
The next day as I was flying on government orders in an almost empty plane to New Hampshire, I had no idea that the company I was sent to help would begin a ventilator design effort from scratch, that same day. I also couldn’t imagine that the resulting ventilator would receive FDA approval 41 days later.
The company, Wilcox Industries, in Newington, New Hampshire, has for twenty years built hybrid self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) for the military. In fact, twenty years ago, with full Navy support, I helped them design and test their first Scout (now Patriot), life-support system for Tier One operators. But when the COVID Task Force phoned me, Wilcox had no experience with medical devices, especially ventilators. But with the can-do attitude so typical of military support manufacturers, they were willing to learn. In fact, no one I met at Wilcox questioned that it could be done.
All it took was the drive and leadership of Jim W. Teetzel (center of the photo), a brilliant engineer, businessman and CEO who holds more patents than he can probably remember, young engineers who never considered failure being a possibility, a nimble supply system that provided needed parts within 24 hours, and the magic words which opened every door. Those words were, “COVID Task Force.”
Through the Wilcox network of friends and family, patient ventilation circuit parts almost magically appeared, as did the world’s best mechanical Test Lung.
There was nothing I asked for that did not appear almost as soon as I requested it.
Most important for me was the opportunity to teach by showing, by taking pieces of patient tubing circuits and arranging them in a way that would work with a totally new ventilator concept, the Patriot SAVR (Synchronous Automatic Ventilating Resuscitator.)
Our tasking from the COVID Task Force was not to produce multiple copies of existing sophisticated ventilators that cost as much as a nice car, but to have all hands engaged in producing small, cheap ventilators built to exacting engineering and medical standards. The proof that Wilcox accomplished that goal was the hard won stamp of approval from the Federal Drug Administration (FDA.)
While we want Americans to have the finest medical care money can buy, to include BMW-priced ventilators if the need arises, the fact is that during a world pandemic there simply are not enough of those deluxe models to go around. In the most populous nations of the world where per capita income is low, the availability of hundreds of such ventilators are a luxury few if any outlying hospitals can afford. However, low-cost ventilators like the Patriot SAVR fill that need.
Wilcox is blessed with a retired Marine Corp Colonel, Kevin Dodge (on the left side of this photo), Jim Teetzel’s Chief Strategy Officer. Dodge not only has the experience of managing production and testing programs as complex as that for the V-22 Osprey, but has an understanding of the need for strategically placed world markets.
Together, Jim Teetzel, Kevin Dodge, the “wicked” smart Executive Director of International Programs and Lebanese-born Roula Assadi, and Jim’s senior engineers (Nic Goupil, Gary Lemire, Stan Carter) and their Maestro of Quality Assurance, Lorena Grol, have succeeded in turning a small but wealthy Arab nation into a manufacturing center for the Middle East and North African Region, as well as the huge Indo-Asian continent.
Considering the tactical pedigree of this ventilator, and the company which built it, I foresee that eventually every U.S. military medic or independent duty corpsman will have one or more of the Patriot SAVR units available at their aid station, just in case any Patriots need saving.