Interview with: David Edwards, Sales and Marketing Manager, Ambu Ltd.

Ambu, the company that brought you the very first manual resuscitator in 1956, is a Danish company that develops, produces and markets diagnostic and life-supporting equipment and solutions to hospitals and rescue services across the world. Their three business areas are: Airway Management, Patient Monitoring and Diagnostics and Emergency Care.

David Edwards is the Sales and Marketing Manager of Ambu Ltd and has been with the company for 15 years.

APN: Ambu has recently bought out an interesting new product. Can you tell us a bit about it?
DE: The Ambu aScope is a revolutionary single patient use flexible intubating scope – the very first in the world. It incorporates all the unique demands of intubation within anaesthesiology but in a disposable format. It has a lightweight ergonomic handle design for better intubation comfort and it utilises camera technology instead of fibreoptics, which ensures a good, clear image, which is displayed on the high-resolution Ambu® aScope™ Monitor. The Ambu aScope Monitor itself is completely portable and runs off a rechargeable battery so it can be used anywhere in the hospital. It takes less than 30 seconds to get the aScope ready for use as no light balancing is required and there is no unwieldy stack to maneuver. In short, the Ambu aScope is ready to go wherever and whenever it is needed. It was designed with functional simplicity in mind in order to decrease the risk of human error factors. It is quite literally plug and play!

APN: What prompted Ambu to develop this kind of product?
DE: When Ambu were investigating what they wanted to invest their R&D resources into they spent a lot of time with anaesthetists from across the world asking a number of questions. What became apparent was that the incidence of difficult airways was on the rise and that although the majority of hospitals had the necessary apparatus to deal with these situations it wasn’t always available. Think titanic and lifeboats. This was a situation that Ambu wanted to improve. By providing a single patient use flexible intubating scope hospitals can now ensure the availability of these devices at a relatively low start up cost and at a realistic continuous use price (without the inconvenience of reprocessing protocols). The incidence of an unanticipated difficult airway might be extremely small but they can and do happen. This device allows hospitals to ensure that parts of a hospital that might not have fibrescopes at hand, such as obs & gynae, A&E and even remote theatres can have a similar device available, should they ever need one.

APN: Did you involve anaesthetists in the development of this new product?
DE: We involve our customers in every product that we develop. It is hugely important to us that we develop products that are not only functional but exceed our customer’s expectations in as many ways as possible. In the case of the aScope we involved a number of key anaesthetists in the development process from across the world. We involved them in focus groups, interviews, one-on-one meetings, manikin trials and now clinical trials.

APN: How is the Ambu aScope being received by the anaesthetics community?
DE: At the time of writing the UK have set up a number of clinical trial sites. The feedback from these sites is excellent. Indeed, a number of trial sites have already chosen to equip parts of their hospital with the aScope, before they have even completed the trial. We are being told that the aScope is very simple and easy to use. That it is a fairly intuitive device, very comfortable to use (it is much lighter than traditional fibrescopes) and that the image, due to the camera technology and the light sensitive autofocus, is extremely clear and sharp.

Once the trial sites have completed their evaluations we will be able to launch this product to the rest of the country. We have had a huge amount of interest from exhibitions such as AAGBI, AfPP and DAS and anyone that has registered their interested will be first in line to see clinical samples of the aScope.

APN: How does the Ambu aScope compliment your current product portfolio?
DE: The aScope compliments our current range perfectly as we already have our very popular range of Aura laryngeal masks, UltraSeal anaesthesia facemasks, SPUR II resuscitators and we are also distribute exclusively the Pentax AWS rigid indirect laryngoscope. Anaesthesia is an area we are particularly dedicated to and we are excited about our ever-expanding range.

APN: Do you have any new (anaesthesia related) ideas on the drawing board?
DE: Yes we do and they are equally as exciting as the Ambu aScope. Watch this space!

APN: What changes do you see occurring in the anaesthetics and healthcare industry over the next few years?
DE: Within anaesthetics I feel that understanding Clinical Human Factors will become increasingly more important in improving patient safety. The number and prevalence of difficult airways is on the rise and CHF play such a huge role in being able to deal with them, especially in the unanticipated difficult airway situation. Reports such as NAP4 will also be of huge benefits to anaesthetists and industry. We can all learn from each other’s experiences.