Across Scotland, NHS staff are continually innovating and coming up with new ideas, many of them simple devices, gadgets or programmes that help them do their job more easily. Some of these ideas can be commercialised and developed into new products to improve healthcare.
It is exactly these ideas that Scottish Health Innovations (SHIL) wants to capture! Set up in 2002 by NHS Scotland, SHIL works with all staff across all Scottish NHS Boards to develop ideas and inventions into products which can be sold back into the NHS and the wider market place. Often the simplest ideas are the best and SHIL have developed and marketed products based on ideas put forward by a wide range of healthcare staff including midwives, porters and pharmacists, to name but a few. The Rhinopinch device, used to stop nosebleeds, started life as nothing more than a couple of wooden tongue depressors held together with elastic bands when it was brought to SHIL by an A&E doctor! Staff developed it into a CE-marked device which is now in use in A&E departments, GP surgeries, schools and clinics across the country and beyond.
If you have an idea for an invention which would improve healthcare then don’t be shy, get in touch with SHIL and one of their business development managers will be delighted to come out and meet you to discuss it further. Successful products generate revenue which is fed directly back to the health board AND to you the inventor, which is even more reason to get in touch with them. You never know, your simple idea might be the next big seller!
For more information please see www.shil.co.uk or drop an email to SHIL’s Head of Business Development, Robert Rea (robert.rea@shil.co.uk)
