Smiths in the community

Smiths Specialty Engineering, Tutco, Tennessee, US

Tutco has been a proud sponsor of Prescott Central Middle School (PCMS), which is home to approximately 950 fifth and sixth graders, since 1996.

Tutco employees who are parents and grandparents of PCMS students are encouraged to participate in and support various activities during school hours throughout the year.

In addition, Tutco has built a close relationship with its local university, Tennessee Tech, to provide work placement opportunities for the university's students and promote development activities for mutual benefit.

Smiths Medical, Southington, Connecticut, US

Like many of our businesses, the Smiths Medical facility in Southington hosts field trips for the local high school students to offer insights into the world of engineering.

Smiths Technology Education Programme (STEP)

One of this year's beneficiaries of a charitable donation was The Royal Academy of Engineering, which helped to set up a collaborative education initiative with Smiths - the Smiths Technology Education Programme (STEP).

STEP aims to help tackle the problem of the declining numbers of UK students entering engineering careers by providing able young people from diverse backgrounds who face social or financial barriers with the information and financial support they need to explore a career in technology. In particular, the programme reaches out to female and ethnic minority students who are under-represented in the engineering sector.

Through the programme, 20 students per year who are studying advanced level qualifications in mathematics and science are offered the opportunity to participate in a Headstart summer school course in engineering and technology, run by The Royal Academy of Engineering. Five of those alumni are then selected to receive a Smiths bursary of £1,000 per year towards the cost of taking an engineering or technology course at university. Smiths has made a commitment to the initiative for at least three years

 

STEP was formally launched with an educational day at one of Smiths key manufacturing facilities in the UK. STEP student Shahina Ali, who plans to study mechanical engineering, said:

"The support I am receiving from Smiths will really help with my progression through university. Without it, I may not have been able to go to university at all."

Smiths is currently investigating work placement opportunities for the students.

Weebale nnyo - "Thank you very much" in Luganda

Smiths Medical helped to make newborn babies in Uganda healthier when they responded to an appeal for vital medical equipment from a neonatal intensive care nurse who volunteers for Health Volunteers Overseas.

Ellen Milan contacted Smiths Medical to request donations of Medfusion™ syringe pumps - which help medics deliver medication automatically - and IV tubings to take with her to the Special Care Baby Unit at Mulago Hospital in Uganda (shown below).

If babies don't get the intravenous fluids they need, they can develop hypoglycaemia and dehydration, which can be fatal. In an environment where there are only one or two nurses charged with looking after the health of over 30 children, the Medfusion™ pumps prove to be vital tools that enable the nurses to administer the right medication.

Ellen wrote a very moving letter to thank us for our assistance in providing this equipment:

"With the donation of these valuable syringes pumps. Smiths Medical has helped make a difference in the lives of newborns in Uganda."

 

John Crane, Bangalore, India

John Crane Bangalore organised a blood donation session at its facility earlier this year. Around 50 employees participated.

The Smiths Medical Young Everest Study (SMYES)

Smiths has had a long-standing relationship with Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH) and University College London (UCL) for over 15 years.

This year Smiths Medical contributed a further £150,000 towards the Smiths Medical Chair of Anaesthesia and Critical Care at UCL.

Professor Monty Mythen, is a member of the Smiths Medical advisory panel, and the first person to hold the Chair. Professor Mythen said: "Smiths Medical has donated more than £4,000,000 over the last decade to research at UCL. As a result of that funding, we are able to underpin research into anaesthesia, critical care, respiratory medicine and respiratory physiology. It provides us with core funding, which allows us to seed and develop young scientists and also get involved in the collaborative development of key technologies and advancements in the care of critically ill children - and now adults as well.

"The Smiths Medical Chair at UCL to a very large extent underpins academic anaesthesia in the United Kingdom. It has been a dwindling speciality and, were it not for endowments such as this, I think we would have seen the death of academic anaesthesia in the UK."

As part of this research, Professor Mythen was involved in a pioneering project that took place this year, the Smiths Medical Young Everest Study (SMYES). The study was conducted by doctors and scientists from GOSH and UCL's Institute of Child Health (ICH).

Groundbreaking Mount Everest trip

In the first study of its kind, nine healthy children were taken on a groundbreaking trip to Mount Everest by doctors and scientists at UCL, ICH and GOSH, aiming to develop new treatments for critically ill children and those with both breathing and sleep problems.

SMYES investigated how the children coped with low oxygen levels in the Everest region. Doctors do not yet fully understand children's responses to low oxygen levels, which are common in very sick children and can be fatal. By investigating how healthy children's bodies cope and adapt at altitude, the SMYES team hopes to improve the chances of survival for very sick children. The team also aims to improve the quality of life of those with chronic/long term lung diseases and to develop new methods for detecting and treating children with disturbed sleep patterns.

Each morning, the children recorded in a diary how they were feeling. They also had their blood pressure, oxygen saturation and heart rate measured. Wherever possible, the scientific team used simple non-invasive methods to measure sleeping patterns, lung function, response to exercise, short term memory and blood flow to the brain to see how well the children adapted to altitude.

Janet Stocks, Professor of Respiratory Physiology at UCL, ICH, who led SMYES, said: "The information gathered by the Smiths Medical Young Everest Study will provide important information about how children's bodies cope and adapt in conditions of low oxygen.

"We hope that the results can be used to help the many children we treat at Great Ormond Street Hospital who suffer from a shortage of oxygen due to a variety of lung problems and sleep disorders.

"We also hope that the methods and equipment that we have adapted for use during this trek can be used afterwards to monitor children with sleep or breathing problems in their own homes. This would reduce the number of hospital visits and overnight stays for these children and their families." The results from the study will be revealed next year.

SMYES was carried out in collaboration with Caudwell Xtreme Everest (CXE), the largest medical research project conducted at altitude. CXE, which was also conducted by UCL, investigated how adults acclimatised to low oxygen levels.

Professor Monty Mythen spent three months in Nepal running the Smiths Medical High Altitude Laboratory at Namche Bazaar (3,400m/11,155ft) as part of CXE. There, the team tested over 200 volunteer trekkers en-route to Everest Base Camp, His four children, Patrick, 13, Charlotte, 11, Alice, 8, and Tom, 6, took part in SMYES.

Doctors involved in CXE concluded they would not be able to apply the results of the adult study to children because children's bodies work differently: they are not simply 'miniature adults'. They decided to take advantage of the unique infrastructure provided by the study to carry out similar tests on children. Results from both studies are being used to help develop and validate new medical devices.

St Mungo's

Employees from Smiths Medical took a hands-on approach to helping out in their local community when they participated in St Mungo's Putting Down Roots initiative, a gardening project for London's homeless (shown below).

Donning their working boots, the team, which included Smiths Medical Group Managing Director Srini Seshadri, spent a day refurbishing a communal area used by the charity to improve the wellbeing of some of London's most vulnerable people. The team cleared away waste ground, created flower beds and laid more than five tonnes of shale and gravel as the foundation for garden pathways.

Smiths Medical donated £1,000 to the cause which was used to purchase gardening equipment and building materials. In addition, employees at Smiths generously supported fundraising activities and collections for warm clothing and toiletries for the charity throughout the year.