Urgent Oximeter Response
Dutch | May 6, 2020
The Bike Shed Community Response with Covid Crisis Rescue and Team Rubicon UK are supporting the NHS and London Ambulance Service to deliver Oxygen Saturation meters to those who are affected with Covid-19, to determine whether or not they are suffering from undetected hypoxia, and should be in hospital for urgent, life-saving treatment – filling a gap between urgent 999-calls and stay-at-home 111 consultations.
With call-outs initiated by senior doctors and clinicians in London, our DBS-checked volunteer riders are on-call to take O2 sensors from the Royal Free Hospital in London to urgent cases at home within 90 minutes of the initial clinical call being made.
While Covid Crisis Response provide the Oximeters, the Bike Shed Community Response provides the volunteer couriers, managed via our ops team, who take calls directly from clinicians, doctors, medics or referred patients, and then task a rider to make an urgent Oximeter pickup from the Royal Free, and dispatch by motorcycle directly to the patient, wherever they are.
This volunteer joint-venture is called Urgent Oximeter Response.
The background to this effort is that people have been dying of “silent hypoxia” in their homes as they appear well enough to stay out of hospital, while their oxygen levels are actually dropping to dangerous levels.
Having fast, urgent access to O2 meters at home will save lives.
Covid Crisis Rescue is a charity set up by an NHS doctor, Dr Sharon Raymond, who launched this game-changing initiative, to fill gaps in current emergency service capabilities. Check their fundraising page HERE.
The Bike Shed’s Community Response riders were the perfect partners to complete this urgent service, providing safe-guarded, tracked riders, managed by a logistics app, using experienced volunteer motorcycle riders who have signed-up for criminal record checks, to provide extra security in dealing with this sensitive task.
At the time of writing (18th May) we are delivering 10-12 probes a day, growing daily as the word spreads amongst doctors and paramedics.
Dr Sharon Raymond – Urgent Oximeter Response from Dutch von Shed on Vimeo.
As the Urgent Oximeter Response volunteer service expands, we are ready to roll-out beyond London, as the need arises, with several hundred more riders on standby across the UK.
VOLUNTEERS – READ THIS
Those who accept an Urgent Oximeter delivery task (Job Prefix “OXY”) will need to have read additional instructions HERE, for which we we may seek confirmation. In fact, you may as well have a quick look now.
If you take an OXYGEN PROBE job, don’t hang about. Leave straight away.
These are all urgent, life-saving missions, and we have undertaken to deliver these sensors within 90 minutes.
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