Hamilton Medical

Hamilton Medical is a company developing intelligent ventilation solutions, devices and consumables of all critically ill patients – from neonates to adults. They produce ventilation solutions for Intensive Care Units (ICU), Newborn ICUs (NICU), Emergency Rooms (ER), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) procedures, and during transport.

Hamilton Medical is a family-owned business founded in 1983 now run by the second and third generation of the Hamilton family. The company is headquarters are based in Bonaduz, Switzerland, with USA and UK offices located in Reno, Nevada and Birmingham Respectively. Hamilton Medical runs a next-generation manufacturing facility in Switzerland.

Steve Hamilton, one of the company owners, developed “Ventilation Autopilot” – an intelligent ventilator that increases patient safety and reduces clinicians’ workload but leaves the clinician in command. Swiss engineer Josef Brunner, was who previously worked at NASA to develop an automated ventilator for an ICU in the International Space Station, was hired to head the research and development team for the “Ventilation Autopilot”.

The research and development for resulted in the release of Adaptive Support Ventilation (ASV®) in 1997 – now standard on all Hamilton Medical ventilators – and the next-generation evolution INTELLiVENT®-ASV in 2010. These two ventilation modes automatically employ lung-protective strategies to minimize complications and encourage patients to breathe spontaneously – thus improving patient safety and comfort and reducing ventilation time. In addition, they reduce the workload for the clinicians.

The increased demand for ventilators caused by the COVID-19 pandemic lead Hamilton Medical to increase its production output. As of March 31st, 2020 the company's production output was 50% higher compared to the previous year, with plans to increase this capacity further to 100% by the end of April 2020.