Partnership to build innovative respiratory therapy device

Dr. Dan Jones, left, vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, talks during a March 16 news conference to announce the agreement between UMC and the Mississppi Band of Choctaw (MBCI) Indians to manufacture the mobile medical gas utility stand. Also speaking at the conference are, from left, MBCI Chief Phillip Martin, Jerry S. Bridgers, a UMC respiratory therapist and inventor of the stand, and Lester Dalme, president/CEO of Chahta Enterprise.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (MBCI) have announced a partnership to build a device that could impact the care of patients worldwide.

During a March 16 press conference at the Choctaw reservation in Philadelphia, Dr. Dan Jones, UMC vice chancellor for academic affairs, and MBCI Chief Phillip Martin signed an agreement to manufacture a mobile medical gas utility stand. The stand, the brainchild of Jerry Bridgers, a respiratory therapist and manager of the Medical Center’s Biomedical Equipment Department, facilitates respiratory therapy in close proximity to patients safely and effectively.

Standing alongside the trapezoidal device replete with gas canisters, color-coded hoses and other attachments, Jones expressed his gratitude to Martin for the partnership.

“Part of our mission as an academic health science center is to generate new ideas to improve the delivery of health care to people,” Jones said. “We believe this is a great opportunity to take new technology and partner with Chief Martin and his colleagues to not only improve the health of people around the world, but to improve the economy of the people in Mississippi.”
Martin praised the Medical Center’s visionary leadership for nurturing the partnership.

“This apparatus has a lot of potential and could be highly successful,” Martin said. “This partnership is right in line with our policy of bringing high-tech opportunities here to the reservation.

“We’re glad the University of Mississippi Medical Center thought of us to manufacture a product useful in the medical field.”

Made of nonferrous aluminum, the stand can be used in IMRI suites, computerized tomography areas, MRI suites and special procedure areas that employ magnets. Designed with a low center of gravity, the stand can be easily pushed across a room without risk of overturning. Clamps on the front of the stand can hold vacuums, electronic devices and other patient care accessories. In therapeutic areas, blenders and heated humidifiers can be added to administer different gas mixtures and therapy, and the device can be structured to administer more than one gas at a time or multiple lines of the same medical gas.

According to Dr. David Dzielak, associate vice chancellor for strategic research alliances, approximately 10 percent of the nation’s hospitals have critical care beds. Dzielak estimates that if the partnership can realize 20 percent market saturation, there is a possibility of selling 19,000 stands in the United States alone.

“This is one of the things we’ve always wanted to do with technology developed at the Medical Center,” Dzielak said. “We’re very pleased to have this partnership and we’re very excited about the possibilities.”

Lester Dalme, president and chief executive officer of Chahta Enterprise, the manufacturing arm of the MBCI, said the stand will be assembled at the Choctaw Manufacturing Enterprise (CME) plant in the Red Water Tribal Community near Carthage. CME is a division of Chahta Enterprise.

“Our engineering department is located there,” Dalme explained, “and they hold everything from low-volume to high-volume products.” He said CME will rely on Mississippi-based vendors to supply the materials necessary to build the stand.

Chahta Enterprise is one of the largest tribally owned manufacturing firms in the United States, employing 1,500 in its plants in Mississippi and Sonora, Mexico. Chahta produces 130 different part numbers and more than 11 million wiring harnesses each year.

For more information about the mobile medical gas utility stand, call Bridgers in the Medical Center’s Biomedical Equipment Department at (601) 984-4660, or Alan Hines of AGT at (601) 389-3084, ext. 400.