Inventors Wanted for NHS

: Trevort Baylis Wikipedia

CALLING ALL INVENTORS
The NHS has set aside £220 million to be made available for their Innovation programme, to “support faster innovation and more universal diffusion of best practice.” In other words to encourage, recognise and reward new products and inventions to help improve the service.
The service is desperately in need of sensible ideas, to save administration time, to make life easier for patients – and just to keep the service running efficiently without costing the huge amounts that are wasted every year.

So those of you with an idea for an invention to help patients undergoing medical treatment, will now have back-up, and a prize, to help bring the idea to fruition. So dust off those ideas – put in to practice the idea that has been churning around in your brain, and get a slice of the action.
However, the NHS needs to get itself more user-friendly to put over the idea. Journalists had a taste of the amount of time-consuming and useless paperwork that underpins the NHS when we were invited to the launch of INNOVATION.
The first thing a trainee PR learns is always put a contact at the bottom of every press release. Er – the NHS seems to forget this rule.

The second – when holding a press conference give journalists somewhere where they can see to write their notes.
There are other rules, most of which the NHS managed to break successfully when they wasted public money on an expensive press launch of Innovations in an almost-dark gallery at the Science Museum.
Lord Darzi was rolled out to speak to us; he spoke of France spending £109 billion on health a year, whereas we get through about £119 billion; immediately flagging up the question in journalists’ minds, “why isn’t the NHS better than the French system, instead of worse?” But the star of the conference was the brilliant inventor, Trevor Baylis. More about him later.
We were shown various inventions that had been developed by NHS staff; the Proximat, invented by Patsy Pott, allows an accurate and easy-to-use tool for measuring hip range in children with cerebral palsy. In County Durham an Occupational Health Officer had produced a low stool to allow staff to maintain a comfortable posture when examining children. These, and other inventions, are now being manufactured and the NHS gains a royalty from each product sold.
And this was where Trevor Graham Baylis OBE comes in. Trevor is best known for inventing a wind-up radio. Rather than using batteries or external electrical source, the radio is powered by the user winding a crank for several seconds. This stores energy in a spring which then drives an electrical generator to operate the radio receiver. He invented it in response to the need to communicate information about AIDS to the people of Africa. As he talked, he was showing ’something I invented earlier’: a walking stick with torch in handle and magnet on the head. Turn it upside down and you can pick things up with it. Simple, but effective.
In his amusing and interesting speech, when he pleaded that Science was more important than Art – asking “which is more important, a dead sheep or a paper clip?” He made one very telling comment on “Intellectual property”; he was warning the audience that if they invent something in NHS time, the profits will belong to the NHS. However, most inventors work on their invention in the small hours of the morning, at home – and therefore they should reap the rewards. So just be careful where and when you plan your invention. Look him up on the web; he runs a successful studio advising inventors how to make the best out of their invention, and will be able to give sound advice.
Returning home, I looked at the massive press pack weighing in at 2 kgs (rainforests spring to mind). Most important thing with any story is “where do readers get further information?”. So I read, and read and turn over pages faster and faster in desperation – no contact. So I phone the Press office at Dept. Health. It’s 8.30 so girl on duty says she will call me back (i.e. she hasn’t had first cup of coffee). An hour later get a young man, who hasn’t a clue what INNOVATION is, and I can wait my turn in the queue. At 1030 I lose my temper – am told to look on NHS website under FAQs – don’t these people live in the real world?
So, if you want to know more about Innovation, go to www.institute.nhs.uk. Look for Innovation window, click through, ignore heading that says this page is about Innovation Week (long since history) and start trawling.

Or, if you already have an idea, or have invented something, click on http://www.nic.nhs.uk/Pages/Home.aspx.
Over 40% of the discoveries adopted worldwide in the past 50 years were invented here – but perhaps someone can tell the NHS that medical treatment might advance quicker when there is less useless paperwork.