Innovator Matt McGrath picks up Gannochy Trust award
A life-saving device will tonight net its Fife-based pioneer a top award and a £50,000 prize.
- By Leeza Clark
- Published in the Courier : 05.10.10
- Published online : 05.10.10 @ 07.33am
Matt McGrath, of Aircraft Medical, has won the Gannochy Trust Innovation Award of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the highest accolade of its kind in Scotland.
The 32-year-old's company has developed the world's first portable video laryngoscope, which has been used in more than 250,000 cases around the world.
The McGrath Series 5, developed in Scotland, is designed to reduce the risk of failure to deliver oxygen to a patient once they have received a general anaesthetic prior to surgery.
Matt was born and grew up on the island of Benbecula in the Western Isles and was educated at Kingussie High School before leaving Scotland for university in Newcastle. Part of his academic life included working in industry and Matt spent six months in New York at a design consultancy firm.
It was while he was there that he read the laryngoscope design brief and 10 years on, the McGrath brand is one of the best known names in America in medical anaesthesia circles.
Matt returned to Scotland nine years ago to commercialise his product and found his own company, Aircraft Medical. His vision was to build a full infrastructure medical devices company — and he has more than achieved that.
With its base is in Dalgety Bay, it has teams working in Spain on research and America in customer service, is working in 30 countries and has recently secured large contracts in China and Russia.
Each year tens of millions of people around the world undergo a medical procedure called tracheal intubation, allowing a trained medic to artificially take control of the patient's breathing.
Intubation using a laryngoscope requires an anaesthetist or paramedic to insert a tube through a patient's vocal chords and into their trachea, the pipe that carries air into the lungs.
Patient trauma
Due to shortfalls of equipment and the level of skill required, several million "difficult" intubations happen each year. These risk patient trauma, broken teeth, cross-contamination and, in severe cases, brain damage and death.
Matt's product is designed to improve efficiency, allowing users to intubate with far less force, with greater ease and much higher levels of success, particularly in more difficult intubations.
He was highlighted in 2001 by Scottish Enterprise as its Young Entrepreneur of the Year and as Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year by the Entrepreneurial Exchange in Scotland in 2006.
"I am very grateful to The Royal Society of Edinburgh and to the Gannochy Trust for this award and for the recognition of the social and economic significance of the McGrath video laryngoscope," Matt said.
"The prize will be invested in a research project to identify unmet clinical needs in anaesthesia and critical care practice."
Royal Society of Edinburgh president Lord Wilson of Tillyorn said "This award seeks to encourage younger people to pursue careers in the fields of science, technology and research which promote Scotland's inventiveness internationally.
"Independent research has confirmed that since this award was first created the £600,000 provided by the Gannochy Trust to support previous winners has created £4 million of additional value to the Scottish economy... This is no mean feat."
Gannochy Trust chairman Mark Webster said, "Matt has made a huge contribution to medical products. His interest and purpose has been to design and bring to production devices which would improve medical procedures to assist the treatment and therefore the welfare of the patient.
"He has been tenacious to an extraordinary extent, in reality in a philanthropic way which mirrors well the purpose of this trust and in particular those of the Gannochy Trust Innovation Award of the RSE."
Photo used under a Creative Commons licence courtesy of Flickr user mynameisharsha.
08.08am - 05.10.2010 stunned - dunfermline, Scotland Report This
its a sad day when one man wins £900,000 playing a game of poker and another receives £50,000 for developing a life saving device! That just about sums up how ridiculous things have become.
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