Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to speak today.
My name is Neil Godara and I'm the vice-president and general manager of Baylis Medical's design and manufacturing services division. In that division, I'm responsible for the design, development and manufacturing of complex medical devices typically used in the treatment of spinal pathologies. I also lead our involvement in the V4C-560 ventilator project. My background is in biomedical engineering. I have overseen the design and development of over 100 medical devices across multiple medical disciplines.
Before I speak about the ventilator, I would like to share a little bit about the history of Baylis Medical. Baylis Medical was founded in 1986 by Mrs. Gloria Baylis, a registered nurse. Since then, for over 30 years, Baylis has had a track record of developing and manufacturing leading medical devices in the fields of cardiology, radiology, cancer treatment, and spine pathologies.
Currently, our devices are used to treat patients and improve patient care right around the world. Over the years, we have worked hard to develop a fully vertically integrated organization to support that endeavour. What this means is that we have all the necessary capabilities, from conceiving a device and developing it to getting the regulatory approvals and manufacturing it as well.
In total, we are one of the largest medical device companies in Canada in the field of medical devices, and we are also one of the largest in advanced medical device manufacturing as well. Our products specifically are known for advancing the state of medicine in the areas where we operate and also for being of exceptional quality.
Typically, the devices we make at Baylis are highly complex systems. They are used in very sick patients. They are developed, typically, at the intersection of engineering, basic science and clinical care. As such, because of our background, our team has quite a comprehensive understanding of the activities required to bring a medical device to market towards improving patient care. The part of the business that I oversee specifically deals with developing and manufacturing medical devices for other companies around the world. Inside that department, we develop very complex electrical and mechanical devices that are in fact very similar in complexity to a mechanical ventilator.
It's for those reasons that when Rick Jamieson, the Ventilators for Canadians consortium and FTI reached out to me and asked if we would support their efforts toward supplying ventilators to Canadians, of course our gut reaction was to say yes immediately.
What we knew then, and it has proven to be true, was that our existing structures, our expertise and our experience aligned very closely with the technical requirements for building ventilators. To realize that, what we had to do was move a great deal of our resources over to this initiative. Starting in April, after we began, we moved a large portion of our engineering team, supply chain team, regulatory affairs, quality affairs, our physical and manufacturing operations, intellectual property, legal, and our human resources teams—all these folks were moved over to support the ventilator effort since mid-April. Since we started manufacturing, our manufacturing teams have been working 24 hours a day, seven days a week toward supplying the ventilators to FTI en route to the Government of Canada.
To date, as mentioned by FTI, we have supplied nearly 8,000 ventilators in support of Canada's COVID-19 efforts, and we're extremely proud to have played a role there.
I would like to take a moment, on behalf of the hundreds of employees of Baylis and the many teams around the world that have supported us in making this, to say that we've had access and talked to many front-line workers and we are completely moved and overwhelmed by their efforts to support Canadians and those who are suffering from COVID during this pandemic.
For what it's worth, we are very grateful for having this chance to serve our country in this time of need.
Thank you.