UCLA DENTISTRY COVID PPE²

UCLA DENTISTRY COVID PPE² team was formed to address personal protective equipment (PPE) shortage in our dental clinics and medical center. Within days, the mission expanded to address escalating demands from UCLA Health System and affiliates. Teams comprising of engineers, dentists, and physicians from UCLA and beyond were formed around Project themes. Each team worked tirelessly to analyze, brainstorm, design, prototype, test, and validate solutions that must pass the rigorous review before acceptance by UCLA Health System. Besides safety and efficacy, key design considerations include scalable manufacturing, supply chain limitations, time/cost effectiveness, and sustainability.

The other “PPE” in PPE² is public-private-engagement of passionate alumni and friends from private industry to harness private sector resources to address vital public health needs. These government, industry, and individual partners contributed immensely by providing manufacturing expertise, solving critical supply chain bottlenecks, controlling cost by leveraging special vendor relationships, validating scalable manufacturing of our designs, providing guidance on regulatory and legal issues, and accessing priority manufacturing in clean, ISO certified facilities with FDA registration and quality control systems.

The UCLA DENTISTRY PPE² also collaborates with government agencies, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations to accelerate our mission to equip our frontline healthcare workers combating COVID-19. Five of the PPE² solutions are already approved by UCLA Health, and manufacturers have already begun translating our designs into real world solutions. As more solutions clear our dashboard to help our hospital colleagues, we are especially excited to leverage this tremendous experience and industry network to deliver the best in class Dentistry-specific PPEs. UCLA Dentistry will be at the forefront of infection control and public safety.