Air Alliance and Embrace enter strategic partnership

Recent months have seen Air Alliance Medflights’ in-house clinical capabilities continue to evolve, the fixed-wing air medical provider has reported. The firm said it has cemented a clinical partnership with Embrace, a CAMTS-accredited neonatal and paediatric transport service hosted by Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, by undertaking a number of transfers since August.

Embrace is working alongside Air Alliance’s UK-based teams to provide full neonatal and paediatric capabilities. The development of the service in the UK took months of planning, said Air Alliance, including the provision of in-depth aeromedical training onsite at the Air Alliance facilities in Birmingham and a joint CAMTS accreditation site survey, the results of which are due in late October.

The team boasts two incubator stretcher systems: one is intensive care capable with a Ti500 isolette, while the second is high dependency capable and features a Babypod. These are supported by Hamilton T1 ventilators and Neopod humidifiers, said Air Alliance, which are capable of providing comprehensive respiratory support to the smallest of lungs, including nasal CPAP and high flow therapy. Both systems are compatible with Learjet 35A aircraft.

Jane Topliss, Air Alliance Medflight’s director of UK aeromedical services, said: “We believed that it was extremely important to work with a specialised and experienced retrieval team on these types of transfers. By having this partnership in place, we can ensure that the transfer of these complex patients is done as safely as possible and is clinically managed by experts in the field”.

The Embrace team is led by paediatric critical care consultant Dr Steve Hancock and neonatal consultant Dr Cath Harrison. They are further supported by a large group of senior consultants, advanced nurse practitioners and specialist nursing staff who are on call 24/7 to provide clinical advice and retrieval support.

Hancock commented: “We are delighted to be working alongside Air Alliance and to be able to provide a worldwide specialist transport service. Embrace is the first joint neonatal and paediatric transport service in the UK. We undertake over 2,000 transfers a year by road, rotary and fixed-wing aircraft in the UK and Europe, so this is an excellent extension to our current capabilities.”