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Victoria’s Starfish Medical is on the front lines of an effort to manufacture 30,000 ventilators in Canada to meet an expected shortage of the life-saving medical equipment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starfish, Canada’s largest medical device design company, is working with the federal government and other companies to design, develop and produce ventilators.

The goal was to develop a ventilator model that can be constructed quickly and reliably in Canada.

Starfish is involved in coming up with a safe, effective and cost-efficient ventilator design. Their design builds on the original technology developed by Dr. Magdy Younes of Winnipeg, a world-renowned respiratory specialist and innovator.

The next step is to assemble manufacturers and suppliers to quickly ramp up production of the selected ventilator designs.

“We are working as hard as we can to make [ventilators] as soon as we possibly can,” said John Walmsley, executive vice-president of Starfish Medical. “There’s a lot of collaboration across the country to get it done as quickly as possible.”

Asked in his daily briefing about the number of ventilators to be produced, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government needs to be ready for every circumstance.

“The opportunity to make sure that we have ventilators available if we need them is going to be extremely important,” said Trudeau. “So, we have told these companies across the country who have put up their hands to go ahead and get building ventilators as quickly as possible and as many as possible in case we need them in Canada.

“We certainly hope that we won’t be needing all those ventilators, but we also know that there are countries around the world where they are not able to tool up local production to create more ventilators.”

Any extra ventilators Canada makes and doesn’t need can be shared with countries that are facing more difficult circumstances, since the global supply is already stretched thin, he said.

“For us, doing more right now and doing ‘quicker’ right now is really the only option,” said Trudeau.

Last month, the federal government announced $2 billion in funding to support testing and purchasing of ventilators and protective personal equipment in Canada.

Nearly 5,000 Canadian companies have offered their expertise and services to the federal government’s Plan to Mobilize Industry to produce medical equipment and protective gear for health-care workers.

“This is exactly the kind of innovative, collaborative thinking we need to respond to this rapidly evolving pandemic,” Trudeau said at the daily briefing. “By increasing our support for secure Canadian sources of needed materials and equipment, we will be able to help our health-care workers protect themselves, treat patients and slow the spread of this virus.”