| Company name: | Marsden Fire Safety Ltd | Contact name & Job Title | Stephen Clark, Director |
| Project title: | User Support for novel fire simulation tray for hospital and care home fire officers | Month/year | September 2017 |
| Case study writer: | Merle Harrison | Account Manager | Teresa Smith |
| The background to the case study |
| Marsden Fire Safety are specialists in evacuation and moving and handling equipment. They provide generic equipment but are also involved in both in house and working with other groups to design equipment for bespoke and niche markets.
The company was incorporated in 2004 and currently has 4 employees. Marsden Fire Safety has developed the fire simulation tray (FST) to safely replicate a fire situation and enable the training of staff in hospitals and care homes to deal with the subsequent extinguishing of the fire. Healthcare Fire Officers are always looking for the best way to safely replicate a fire situation. The FST allows Fire Safety Officers to train themselves and staff in a “live fire” situation that takes into account the specific needs of healthcare settings due to the lack of on-site facilities in hospitals or care home premises. |
| The challenge / trigger event |
| Although the FST was proving to be popular, the company found that there were limitations to its usability and deployment, specifically related to healthcare environments.
The expansion required was to create a bespoke specialist healthcare DVD as a visual add on, with future plans to develop an operational and support app. These additional products would provide both information about correct use of the device as well as additional features relevant to the unique issues created by fire risk within healthcare settings. This would create a unique yet straightforward concept in advanced fire support and safety for FST deployment by hospital and care home staff. This method of disseminating information visually would radically reduce the risk of incorrect usage of the equipment. |
| The solution |
| Medilink East Midlands awarded a grant to the value of £1,061, through the ACTIS project part funded by ERDF (European Regional Development Fund).
This funding contributed to the creation of the bespoke DVD, with all necessary health and care home specific deployment content including accompanying narrative and the provision of the necessary music license. Additionally the funding supported the editing and graphics design followed by post production reviews and discussions. |
| The results / evaluation |
| Marsden Fire Safety expect an expansion to the FST will increase the products’ usability, particularly in hospitals, care homes and in the overseas healthcare markets. The objectives were to produce an information rich professional and comprehensive DVD for evaluation purposes with end users from a variety of healthcare scenarios. This will lead to iterative improvements in the DVD content ensuring the development of a robust, user friendly and valuable DVD tool. This will provide both information about correct use of the device as well as additional features relevant to the unique issues created by fire risk within healthcare settings.
It is expected that the anticipated further development will lead to job creation, increased profitability and increased export turnover. The success of the FST will also have a knock-on effect on the company’s supply chain; Marsden Fire Safety use a local manufacturer and increase in activity will at the very least create job security. In December 2017 the annual company turnover was £261k; this has increased significantly in the last few months and the turnover at the end of quarter 1 2018 was in excess of £100k. |
| Medilink East Midlands’s role/Quote from the company |
| “We were aware that Medilink EM was able to support qualifying, innovative projects and as far as this particular piece of equipment is concerned we thought that it was a good fit.
We met with the Medilink EM adviser and talked through the project and with her assistance we made the appropriate application. The benefit of Medilink EM’s involvement was to allow us to bring forward the project by a few months and focus our attention on the best way deliver our message about the safest way to use this equipment in a healthcare environment. As stated above the project would have been delayed somewhat and I think that the “discipline” of completing the application form certainly helped us to major on the best way to portray the product in use on the DVD.” Steve Clark, Director, Marsden Fire Safety |