About

Ivor Schofield founded the company at the age of 48. Initially it made & sold a basic range of operating room furniture & stretchers. Ivor realised the need to have his own unique product. When Professor Beard of King’s College Hospital approached the Company in 1990 with a requirement for a Day Surgery Trolley (variable height & tilt), Ivor, a qualified Mechanical & Aeronautical engineer provided the design, with a single, central pump. This product has been a key driver in reducing NHS waiting lists. Ivor also set up the Sales operation, as a joint venture with Tom Brady of Leeds, & recruited & trained several key members of staff including his son Guy (the current Managing Director & Owner & Lee Smith (the general manager). He continued to work in the business into his eighties, dying in 2015 at the age of 90

Building on the early success of the infant company, Patrick (Tom) Brady opens the doors of the sales & customer service centre under the Anetic Aid Ltd. name on Queensway, Guiseley, West Yorkshire, adding operating table accessories, tourniquets and surgical instruments to the range in the process.

Designed in collaboration with Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, the company launched it's fixed height QA Patient Trolley.

Current sales director, Andrew Curtin, joins the company as surgical and healthcare equipment apprentice.

In need of larger premises, the sales & customer service office moves, leaving Queensway for Wells Road, Guiseley

A step forward in the original QA trolley design leads to the launch of the fixed height QA2 Patient Trolley and QA2 Transfer Trolley and their popularity grow.

Having outgrown it's original premises, the Hampshire head office moves to the 5,000 ft² Mitchell Way premises on Portsea Island.

A shift in working practices within the healthcare industry brought about a change in the QA2 Patient Trolley design, with a variable height model being added to the range

Current managing director and owner, Guy Schofield, joins the company in a procurement and trainee management role

Developed in conjunction with King's College Hospital (London) Day Surgery Unit, the company launches it's soon to be popular QA2 King's College Hospital Day Surgery Trolley.....quite a mouthful...becoming more commonly known as the QA2 KCH Trolley.

Our tourniquet control units were always popular, but the APT MK3 set a new benchmark for us - the newly designed unit was a hit from day one and lasted 20 years in production.

Quickly having outgrown the Mitchell Way site, the Hampshire head office moves again, this time to the 10,000 ft² Downley Road, Havant site.

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With the new successes the expansion of the company and it's new products brought, the time had come to expand the field sales team, seeing Richard Lill (North east), Mike Pritchett (North West) and Neil Child (South East) joining the company.

Having taken onboard the feedback from our expanding client based, our patient trolley design took a leap forward, bringing the modern looking QA3 Patient Trolley into existence and what a success story it has become.

Once again, by listening to our clients and watching for changes in working practices we recognised the important part our products play in providing protection against pressure area sores. Our K8 mattresses has proved popular with our clients ever since.

The time had come for the sales & customer service site. With an increasing product range to hold in stock and an expanding workforce, Anetic Aid in the North said a fond farewell to it's Wells Road, Guiseley premises moving to the 15,000 ft² Queensway site.

Building on the popularity of the APT MK3 the company took a lead in pushing tourniquet control unit design forward and introduced the touch screen AET Electronic Tourniquet

What can we say, we're never really satisfied, so we further enhanced the design of the QA3 and in took on the moniker of v2.0 - from there it's popularity grew and grew.

The growing popularity of the company's products meant that head office had to leave the Downley Road site behind and look forward to their 20,000 ft² premises on New Lane, Havant

Again, having listened to it's client base, the company recognised that for Day Surgery the risks associated with manual handling had to be reduced and that a more sophisticated surgery trolley was required - the company welcomed the QA4 Powered Day Surgery Trolley and waved goodbye to the QA2 Kings College Hospital Day Surgery Trolley

With the volume of product being placed on the market in the UK, the service team - both administration and engineering - had to grow. What once was two service engineers had become five and the admin team supporting them grew to match.

We're always ambitious and our products had always been popular abroad, leading to Mike Pritchett being appointed the company's first Export Sales Manager in 2008.

We recognised the QA3 in it's original form would be difficult to improve upon, but, we did it anway! The QA3 took on a more muscular look and saw improvements in many areas - the changes proved popular with clients old and new.

Recognising the design and functionality of the APT MK3 Tourniquet had been exhausted, combined with a desire to take the AET Electronic Tourniquet on a stage, we embarked on a development project that led to the launch of our now incredibly popular AT4 Electronic Tourniquet.

With the continuous steady growth the company was experiencing, the sales, customer service & servicing site were in need of new premises. In 2015 that happened, moving into purpose built premises on Sapper Jordan Rossi Business Park, Baildon, West Yorkshire.

To ensure for future growth and sustainability, the time had come for old ways of working to move aside and embrace a new future. Portsmouth Surgical Equipment Ltd. and Anetic Aid Ltd. amalgamated in 2017, with the former ceasing to trade in name.

As part of the development process for the QA3 DRIVE that followed, the steering on a QA3 was enhanced to offer even greater manouevrability and twin back lift gas struts were added to replace the previously solitary one. Soon to follow were enhancements to the patient platfrom too.

After a complex design & development project the company launched it's innovative and intuitive to use QA3 DRIVE assist mechanism and introduced powered functions, offering wide ranging reductions in manual handling issues experienced by our clients.

As part of our strategy for growth we've taken on another ambitious challenge - our first overseas branch. Initially focusing on the QA4 Mobile Surgery Platfrom for Ambulatory Surgery, Steve Smargiasso and his team at Anetic Aid USA are working to spread the Anetic message in America.

After 16 years, it was time. The QA4 absorbed the latest QA3 v4.0 steer mechanism to enhance further maneuverability, new and improved patient platform boards and most importantly - powered lateral tilt. Once again, the improvements made have proved to be incredibly popular.

To ensure the QA4 offers as wide a ranging surgical versatility, the accessories to go with it have to meet the brief. The company undertook a development project to review it's ophthalmic surgery headrest with the launch of the dual-articulating headrest being the result.

Our logo had been is use in it's current form since 2000 and felt it was time for a refresh, bringing in a lighter, modern and more medical feel to it.

After 9 months of intense development and trials, the first surgically specific QA3™ is launched - the QA3™ Ophthalmic Stretcher - which we all hope proves to be as popular as the rest of the QA3™ family with our clients.