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DAILY MAIL: Dragon's Den on the Hospital Ward
02.02.10
PROBLEM: inaccurate test results from urine samples.
Women have dificulty filling the narrow bottle routinely given out for this. An accurate sample has to be mid-stream - the first part doesn't produce accurate results because it is full of bacteria being flushed from the boday.
SOLUTION: A disposable plastic funnel with a specimen bottle attached down one side - the Peezy. The first part of the flow goes through the funnel an into the loo, but as it continues, a sponge gradually expands to block the hole, so the mid-stream of urine is directed into the specimen bottle. You close the lid on the bottle and bin the funnel.
EUREKA MOMENT: One evening, gp Dr Vincent Forte rang his sister Giovanna to tell her about a woman who had berated him for requesting a urine sample because of the difficulties involved.Giovanna reminded him how he'd loved making things a s a child, so he started cutting up bits of paper for form a funnel.
"The Peezy is simple, but dignified," says Dr Forte, from Norfolk.
It could save the NHS £80 miilion a year in having to re-do contaminated urine tests.
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