KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Medical professionals around the nation continue to report an insufficient amount of testing kits as one of their biggest struggles during the coronavirus pandemic.
It's a weight on their shoulders, and a weight Eric Icard can feel on his shoulders too.
"It's one thing that I keep telling myself you can't mess this up. This is too important," he said.
Icard is a Senior Business Development Manager for The Right Place, and he leads MiDevice, which is a council of medical device manufacturers across West Michigan.
"We have that council is because West Michigan hosts the largest concentration of medical device manufacturers in the state of Michigan," Icard said.
It puts him in a unique position to form partnerships between medical device manufacturers and the medical professionals who need their help now more than ever.
He consulted with Spectrum Health and the Kent County Emergency Operations Command, which confirmed that West Michigan health providers are having trouble with this test shortage too.
“At that point what I ended up doing is brainstorming and looking at our MiDevice medical device council and who would be best situated to react to this type of shortage and immediately Keystone Solutions Group out of Kalamazoo came to mind," Icard said.
"They have a strong engineering side on the project development side and they’re a manufacturer of medical device disposables, so it was a natural fit to contact that company, and they’ve made tremendous strides and should be producing these swabs very soon.”
The manufacturer's work is expected to benefit people beyond our area as well.
“What Keystone is trying to do right now is to really aggregate the total need in the next several months so they can source enough materials to handle those needs, not only for West Michigan but they would certainly want to supply a much larger area," Icard said.
"They have the ability to pump these out pretty quickly once they get going on everything.”
Icard and The Right Place are also hoping other manufacturers can step up and help in the fight against coronavirus.
“If you are a manufacturer and you have personal protective equipment, that you’d like to donate, I’d certainly be open to a call. We’d like to connect you with the first responders or health systems or retirement homes that take of that type of equipment. If you’re a manufacturer who is able to make personal protective equipment, I’d certainly love to be able to talk to you,” he said.
You can reach Icard by phone at 616-771-0556 or by email.
How others are helping during the pandemic:
- Mercy Health offering drive-thru COVID-19 testing at 2 locations
- Dégagé Ministries moves women’s shelter to hotel
- Kentwood distillery donates hand sanitizer to first responders
- Lady Gaga raises $35M for virus battle, part of all-star TV event
- Sewists aim to make 50,000 masks to protect community from pandemic
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