Life changing support

Life changing support

Working in partnership with Philips Healthcare, Marshall has developed an award-winning, patented and rapidly-deployable system that helps to save lives.

Making the difference

A young soldier is injured by an improvised explosive device whilst on patrol in the Arghandab Valley. He is alive, but bleeding badly from a gaping wound on his left side. He is quickly evacuated by helicopter to the nearest military field hospital. The initial assessment of his injuries highlights multiple unstable fractures to the femur, severe soft tissue and vascular injury, plus a cluster of shrapnel in his thigh. He lies on the gurney in the trauma bay, while doctors decide on the fate of his leg.

Using our CT scanner, doctors perform a whole-body trauma scan and diagnose the injury quickly and accurately. With this state-of-the-art technology they could perform a vital operation to save the young soldier’s leg.

Leading edge technology to deliver innovative solutions

In 2008, working together with Philips Healthcare, we developed the first deployable CT scanner for the Norwegian Defence Logistic Organisation (NDLO). The system provides a fully deployable CT capability suitable for mobile operation in the most austere environments and can be set up ready to receive the first trauma casualty within eight hours of arrival in location. Our systems engineers, joined forces with Philip’s CT engineers working long and hard to address the challenges we faced taking a highly sensitive, complex piece of medical equipment and integrating it into an environment that will see high levels of shock loadings, vibrations and extremes of climate that are inherent in modern military deployments.

The hard work paid off, enabling us to patent the system that protects the CT gantry whilst allowing it to remain fixed and in position during transportation. Setup time is reduced by eliminating not only the physical movement of the hardware, but also the need for deployment calibration.

Saving life

More lives will be saved by quickly and accurately diagnosing trauma using CT imagery for severely injured patients on military operations. Military surgeons can now have CT imagery available reliably and consistently wherever they are called upon to deliver medical support. The time to setup the CT scanner is eight hours compared to days taken for industrial competitors. Our CT scanners are already in service with French, Norwegian, Italian, UK Defence Forces and in use by healthcare delivery organisations delivering Humanitarian Aid.

Our design was awarded a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category in 2013.