SZ churns out 300 ECMO machines in 3 weeks

A Shenzhen medical equipment company has successfully produced 300 homemade extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines in merely three weeks, with the 300th machine coming off the production line Feb. 3, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.

As the first domestic manufacturer of ECMO equipment and related consumables, Chinabridge Shenzhen Medical Technology Co. Ltd. achieved a milestone after its ECMO machine gained the National Medical Products Administration approval Jan. 5. It was the first domestically developed ECMO unit given the greenlight in China.

Engineers with Chinabridge Shenzhen Medical Technology Co. Ltd. at work in a company laboratory. Shenzhen Special Zone Daily

ECMO is a therapy used to treat people with life-threatening heart and lung failure. It involves the use a machine to replace some of the functions of a patient’s lungs or heart, or both simultaneously.

“From the approval to the production of 300 machines, in just three weeks, all our staff, including R&D engineers, have worked hard to rapidly improve production capacity, so that the products can be truly put into clinical use,” said Ye Jianping, executive deputy general manager of Chinabridge Shenzhen Medical Technology Co. Ltd.

According to Ye, the company is developing a complete simulation training system to ensure that the products can be safely used after delivery to hospitals, making use of VR simulation training system, on-site practical training, online expert teaching and other training methods.

The first domestic ECMO machine was jointly developed by the National Innovation Center for Advanced Medical Devices, the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen Mindray Biomedical Electronics Co. Ltd. and Chinabridge Shenzhen Medical Technology Co. Ltd.