Donations to: Airway Medical Acc: 14971285 Sort: 040605 Slavi Ukraini!
This blog follows our journey to providing an effective portable extreme environment airway suction device to the Ukraine military
The idea to provide a bespoke device free of charge to the Ukraine armed forces started some time in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Chris and Simon had met through Set-Squared in Bristol and formed a natural friendship straight away. Chris came up with the idea of supporting Ukraine in its fight against tyranny, by supplying 10,000 suction devices free of charge. The device would be based on the technology we had already proven with the CAMSUtm device, but be designed specifically for use in extreme environments including battlefield medicine. Initial discussions were around how this project might work on a practical level and whether such a device would be feasible.
Chris is a uk forces veteran, natural networker, wordsmith and astute business leader. Simon’s strengths are the understanding of the realm of airway suction devices, an innate ability to come up with novel solutions for particular scenarios and the pathway to getting a medical device to market. This combination ensured we would develop a clear plan to success, given the right help and a lot of luck!
Chris left Set-Squared in 2024 and joined Simon at Airway Medical on a more formalised basis. Immediate tasks were prioritised, with our strengths in mind.
We created a ‘one pager’ to describe the project in simple terms. We were fortunate to be offered a translation into Ukrainian by Anna Yerokhina
One key aspect was to track down Dr Robert D Lorenzo, as he had written a seminal white paper* in 2017 about battlefield casualties, suffered due to choking to death. It showed that airway obstruction was the second most common cause of PREVENTABLE death on the battlefield. Despite this, no advances had been made in 30 years or so, since the introduction of the manually powered Tvac device.
*https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD1049181.pdf
Another priority was to explore the potential grant funding route provided by DASA (defense and security accelerator) in the UK and other funding bodies. A pre-submission was accepted and so we sent in a formal proposal and waited…….
Amazingly Chris found our man! We set up a meeting online with him and his colleagues as soon as possible Rob was really interested to talk to us which was great and once we explained what we were doing and why and how he was impressed to say the least it was really good to get his insight and we talked a lot about the potential of our device and how it might help with the issue of a poorly functional device as the only option of available to the army at present.
Shortly afterwards we had a surprise call from the department of business and trade inviting us to Warsaw for the rebuild Ukraine conference naturally we were very pleased to go and booked our flights to Warsaw once there we quickly found where we fitted and how it might be possible to utilize the British Embassy and Eve department business and trade and the contacts we’ve made during our visit to Warsaw.
Chris and Spencer time presenting online to Ukrainian police cadets about the ethics of warfare and how they may consider themselves victors merely by behaving in the correct manner during the difficult time for their country. Subsequent to this he was then invited to visit Kyiv to present to the next cohort of police cadets crispy and Chris networked and found there were indeed people in Ukraine that were very interested in what we were trying to do and wanted to help us. One such person is Stuart Paver, with whom we had follow up meetings.
On Chris’ second visit he cemented relationships and came across individuals such as the rockstar Andriy, who just happened to be a retired combat surgeon and was well connected within the politics of the Lviv and Ukraine armed forces generally. He also met Yulia, an inspirational woman who had a natural empathy for veterans that had suffered life-changing injuries.
In the meantime back in the UK Simon had been busy working on the design for what was now called the TAMS device (tactical airway management system). Following feedback from a litany of combat medics surgeons and extreme environment specialists, it was clear the design of the personalised care CAMSU would not be suitable for use on a battlefield. Simon started to work through the problem checking in with Chris now and then due to his forces background and knowledge of the tvac and it’s failures. Two potential forms of the TAMS device were formulated and the feasibility proven.
We heard from dasa and they had decided not to approve our application. It was incredibly difficult to understand why the UK armed forces were not interested in what we were trying to achieve. The feedback we received didn’t really indicate any specific reasons and to be honest, they may as well have not bothered. Despite this setback we applied to a NATO Diana call that seemed to fit what we were trying to achieve. We used the dasa application as a template and worked hard to tick every box; if you like, for the Diana call. In our mind it was a cast iron application that fitted the scope and desires of the grant call. Its ultimate goals including the wider humanitarian and other commercial opportunities outside of combat medicine, the sustainability aspects ,the novel technology and the quick route to market that we have proposed all made a strong application. Again we waited….
Chris hard maintained contact with Andriy and suggested that he and Simon should have a chat as they seem like kindred spirits. The meeting went incredibly well. Andriy was very generous with his feedback on our proposal and suggested he could put us in touch with some people who would definitely be interested and could make decisions like yes or no that were vital to success.
Chris had also found a potential manufacturer in Ukraine that currently manufactured body armor he found out that the ballistic plates in the body armour would be in removed by compartments due to the different types of injury now being experienced rather than being shorter they would be entitled by drones you would carry small explosive charges to cause blast injuries as opposed to gunshot wounds this some undoubtedly would have an effect on the sales of ballistic vests which were there mainline product and so Chris imagined they would be very interested in finding other potential revenue streams such as our towns device Stuart Paver I’d suggested that if we could find a manufacturer he would be interested in helping us further
Now seems to be a good time for Simon to make a visit to Ukraine to meet with all these valuable connections Chris had worked so hard to make and so plans were made flight booked accommodation and a number of meetings set up for a trip to Lviv in November 2025.