With Ruth Lee’s technology, manikins are more realistic than ever

Long-standing exhibitor, Ruth Lee joins the show under the Protect Medical Group banner and here we find out how through mixed reality innovation, training with their manikins is closing the gap between simulation and reality.

Can you tell us what brands we can expect to see from the Protect Medical Group this year?

For the first time, visitors will be able to see three Protect Medical Group brands together on the same stand (Stand N40) Ruth Lee will be showcasing our rescue training manikins, alongside Spencer with its range of stretchers and patient transport equipment, and PAX with its specialist emergency bags, backpacks and rescue transport systems. It’s a great opportunity for visitors to explore products from across the group in one place and see how the different brands can support emergency services from training, right through to real-life response.

Ruth Lee is well known to the emergency services world, what brings you back to the show year after year?

The biggest thing for us is the opportunity to meet so many of our customers in one place. It’s always brilliant to catch up face to face with people we’ve worked with for years, hear what they’ve been up to and, of course, meet plenty of new people too! There’s also no substitute for seeing someone’s reaction when they get hands-on with one of our manikins or experience RL360 for the first time. It’s often a mixture of wonder, surprise and occasionally a little bit of horror when they experience some of our more realistic manikins. Those conversations and reactions are a big part of what makes the show so valuable for us every year.

Last year you launched your RL 360 mixed reality project, how has that been received and what updates have you made to it in the last 12 months?

It was received incredibly well. We had lots of people coming to the stand specifically to put the headset on and see what all the fuss was about, and we had some really exciting conversations about how RL360 could be integrated into their own training. Since last year’s show, we’ve continued developing the platform and adding new functionality. One of the biggest changes has been making interactions even more natural by removing the hand-held controllers and allowing users to interact using their actual hands.

We’ve also introduced new scenarios, including Ten Second Triage, and we’re hoping to launch our latest set of scenarios at the show, including Primary Survey. The aim is always to make training more realistic, immersive and memorable – RL360 is continuing to evolve in exactly that direction.

When it comes to water rescue training, realism and robustness are critical. What does Ruth Lee offer emergency services to meet this need?

We have a whole range of water rescue manikins designed for different applications, teams and scenarios, but our Advanced Water Rescue Manikin is definitely one of our most impressive. Available as both an adult and a toddler – with the toddler always proving to be a highly emotive conversation-starter – it combines highly realistic medical features with the ruggedness Ruth Lee is known for. It offers one of the most realistic CPR torsos in the world, providing chest compression that feels like the real thing.

It is also a full airway management tool which can be intubated and allows teams to practise interventions and pre-hospital care, while still being robust enough for demanding rescue scenarios, including being thrown from a helicopter into the water. It really allows rescuers to train for the whole incident, from recovering the casualty from the water through to providing medical care. It’s pretty cool, if we do say so ourselves!

Ten Second Triage is being used by many services, how can you demonstrate it in action using your manikins?

Ten Second Triage really comes to life when combining a Ruth Lee manikin and RL360. The trainee simply puts on the headset, attaches the limb trackers to any adult Ruth Lee manikin and is presented with a realistic digital casualty that needs to be triaged. Instead of relying on a fit and healthy volunteer holding a piece of paper telling you what their injuries are, RL360 overlays a digital patient onto the physical manikin.

The casualty can present visible symptoms and injuries for the trainee to assess, making the process much more immersive and memorable. You’re still physically moving and interacting with a real manikin, but the mixed technology allows us to create scenarios that simply wouldn’t be possible with traditional training methods.

When it comes to future product development, how do you go about testing new things?

We’re very lucky to have an incredibly engaged customer base, and we rely heavily on the experts who actually use our products to help guide our development. They’ll tell us where the gaps are, what challenges they’re facing and sometimes come to us with ideas for things they’d love to be able to train for. We then work with them to develop solutions and test them properly in realistic environments. When you’ve got a new product or a new feature to play with, people are usually more than happy to help test it (and occasionally try their absolute best to break it too). That feedback is invaluable and helps us make sure our products are genuinely fit for the environments they’re designed for.

Where do you manufacture your manikins? Can you give us some insights on the production process?

All of our manikins are handmade right here in the UK, at our head office and manufacturing facilities in North Wales, in Glyndyfrdwy and Corwen. People are often surprised when they visit and see our relatively small team of highly skilled machinists and assemblers. They sometimes imagine huge factories and production lines, but the reality is very different. Every single manikin, even our massive 260kg bariatric manikin, is individually hand made by our team. That craftsmanship has always been at the heart of Ruth Lee. Our products might end up being used all over the world, but they’re still made by the same skilled hands here in North Wales, and I think that’s something we’re incredibly proud of.

How hands-on with your products can our visitors be when they visit your stand this year?

As hands-on as they want to be! Our manikins are incredibly tactile products, and you can’t really understand the realism, weight and handling characteristics until you’ve actually got your hands on one. At the end of the day, these manikins are designed to help people train to save lives, and that’s not something you can learn just by standing back and looking. You need to get stuck in – pick them up, get a good grip, drag them to safety and experience what it’s actually like to work with them.

So we’d encourage visitors to come along to stand N40 and get as hands-on as they like! The same goes for the other brands on the stand too. There will be plenty to explore, from Spencer’s stretchers and rescue equipment to PAX’s impressive range of specialist bags. We can’t wait to see everyone at the show.

Ruth Lee is a Premier Partner and Founding Partner at The Emergency Services Show 2026 at the NEC on 16-17 September, and will be exhibiting on Stand N40. Register for your free ticket here.