My name is Matt and I work as an Anaesthesia Associate in a major NHS Liverpool Hospital, having  proudly worked as an Operating Department Practitioner (ODP) for over a decade previously.  I'm also a medical device inventor and the origin project founder and co-inventor of the LEAFix device, a commercial globally successful airway securing medical product.  

 

I'm sharing my early journey here as there's a chapter to the LEAFix project which has never been told before, it’s my origin founder innovation story.  It's the story of a very inexperienced ODP identifying a huge global patient problem and having absolutely no idea what to do next.  After spotting this patient problem, I carried the product concept around with me in my head for nearly 11 years, prior to inviting a colleague (co-inventor of LEAFix device) onto the project and engaging our Hospital Trust's RD&I team & a specialist IP company employed by the hospital for project guidance & support.   

 

I’m telling this origin story for the first time because I am absolutely passionate about trying to inspire other problem solvers to develop their ideas.  My genuine hope is that sharing my story will go some way to offering encouragement & inspiration to others who may feel a bit lost and don’t know how to start their innovation journey. I have always championed those around me, bringing them with me when they doubted themselves, so if you're still reading I hope you enjoy the story.

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Spotting the problem ‘Where’s the thing??!’

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The LEAFix project begins all the way back in September 2003 in the Anaesthetic room of Theatre 6 within the Main Operating Theatres of the old Royal Liverpool NHS Hospital. I was a first year Operating Department Practitioner (ODP) student and it was my first week in placement.  The student ODP training was on the job for the whole, so new students were thrust straight into practice, real surgical operations from the get go, so it was a baptism of fire for lay people like myself, as I'd switched careers from the finance industry.

 

I’d recently returned from a year’s global backpacking trip prior to starting ODP training.  My career prior to this had been a business based degree, followed by completion of a 2 year Graduate Scheme with HBoS, however the finance world wasn’t for me, hence the backpacking which allowed me time & space to figure out what I was to do with my life.

 

So here I am, stood by the doors in TH6 anaesthetic room on week 1, watching the patient getting checked in.  Monitoring on, cannula in, I’m stood with my back to the anaesthetic room doors taking all of this in as it’s totally new to me.  I’d been told that there's specific equipment for everything in anaesthetics, Macintosh laryngoscopes, endo-tracheal tubes, pilot cuffs, anaesthetic machines, so I was in awe to be honest, just looking on.

 

I watched as the anaesthetist injected the anaesthetic drugs with mask on, followed by the anaesthetic vaporiser being swivelled and a few minutes of bag mask ventilation, complete silence, wow this is serious stuff.  Next the ODP flicked open the laryngoscope, the anaesthetist takes it into the patient’s mouth, followed by the handed ET tube, the ODP inflated the cuff, circuit attached to the tube, CO2,  airway secure.

 

Then it happens.  I’m watching very closely as I’ve never seen this before and I’ll be doing it soon so taking note, the ODP reached into the front pocket of her scrubs and pulled out a roll of tape.  What's going on here?

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As she tore off a piece of tape from the roll I asked her what she was doing? She replied "to secure the tube". I watched as she wrapped the strip of tape around the ET Tube and stuck it to each side of the patients face.  I'm questioning what I've just witnessed here as I can't quite believe what I've just seen. My eye's flicking around the room looking for a clue from somebody that this is a joke.  I cannot believe what I've just seen! This just isn't right??

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I said “where’s the thing to hold the tube?” (I’d been told there’s a specific tool/thing etc for everything) The ODP looked at me like I was mad, everybody in the room did, she said “this is what we do”. 

 

At this point I actually thought this could be a joke being played on the new guy (me), left handed hammer or tartan paint sort of caper, that's how mad I thought this was. Then when they moved on to other tasks I realised this wasn't a joke.  I couldn't believe it, strangely I felt insulted, is this the best we can do for our patient's, this, unbelievable!?.  That's exactly what happened and how I felt, and that's why for nearly 11 years I carried around with me the ambition to develop something better. 

 

That was the moment that the LEAFix project was born, TH6 anaesthetic room September 2003.  I adopted the practice like everybody else, started taping the airways (it’s harder than it looks), I took great pride in my taping technique, possibly due to the fact that I was completely obsessed with the fact that we shouldn’t be using tape for this task.  Something was very wrong and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  I just knew there was another way, we could do so much better than this.

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Conservatory conversation that would change everything.

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One Saturday afternoon in February 2014, 11 years after seeing that intubation with the tape for the first time I was having a chat with my father in law Richie in his conservatory, when he randomly announced that he & his pal Jimmy had invented a bung system for central heating systems and that it’s still sold in B&Q.  When he told me that he'd invented something I felt a strange and powerful emotion hit me.  My brain instantly said to me "It's possible!! I've met somebody who's invented something, somebody like me!!.  Right there and then, I was triggered, something happened to me and I came alive, at that exact moment to the fact that I was going to develop this tape solution. ' It’s possible', that's all I needed to hear and think. 

 

I said to Richie “I’ve got an idea, I’ve spotted a problem" and explained to him that dirty generic rolls of hospital tape are used to secure airways and that I really wanted to try and make a specific device for the job, something better.  He said he knows nothing about that but he had 2 pieces of advice for me.  One, that there would be an Intellectual Property (IP) policy in work and that I should get hold of a copy, and he went on to explain what Intellectual Property was.   Two, that I should invite a colleague on board like he did with Jimmy, because it would be boring doing this on my own, when you have to travel away and it's good to bounce ideas off each other.  

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So I took Richie's advice, and with an excited spring in my step headed into work the next day.

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Who to choose?

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This was it and I was pretty excited about taking Richie's advice about reaching out to a colleague and inviting them on board to finally give this a go.  I must admit I was really nervous but also extremely excited too.  It was a Sunday so there weren’t many ODP colleagues working that day so I spent the morning trying to figure out who I was going to talk to about inviting onto the project, who would be good to work with? 

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​Don’t ask me why but I turned to a strategy I used when I was backpacking in Fiji at the end of my global backpacking trip, I’d let the universe decide, leave it to fate.  My penultimate leg of my world backpacking trip consisted of a week in Fiji, I’d been travelling on my own for 4 months by now.  Fiji is made up of over 330 islands and I figured it would be nice to spend some time on one of these remote islands in the Pacific, but which one?  I had no idea, so I came up with a game plan.  I’d recently read a book by Luke Rhinehart called ‘The Dice Man’, where a character decides to live his life through the roll of a dice, with 6 options for each roll.  So I decided to do a similar thing.  I knew that as soon as I got through Arrivals at Suva airport I’d be greeted with people asking me to stay at this hostel or that hostel, I said to myself whoever offers first, I’m going there.  I also knew that when I got to said hostel there'd be a journal book in the reception area where other backpackers have written suggestions of where to go, this island etc. So again I decided whichever island review I read first, that's where I would spent the week in Fiji! And I did.

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So here I am, sat in the ODP corner of the theatre coffee room, having just decided that whichever ODP sits down next to me next, I’m going to turn to them and say 'I’ve got this idea do you want to join me and try to develop a solution'?  Well, the person that sat down what can I say, there was no way this would work.  So I remember saying in my mind no way universe, 'no way'!!.  This was it, I was now at my wits end, this was over 10 years and I just thought come on, so I said to myself again “whoever it is next, that’s it I’m just turning to them, what will be will be.” Rob sat down next.  I turned to him with a roll of tape in my hand that had a hair stuck to it and said "Look at the state of that", I then said "this tape would have been used on a patient's face!".  he replied "That's disgusting."  I thought that's a positive response for what I'm planning.  I then asked him if he wanted to join me in trying to create a solution to this problem of filthy tape securing our patients airways, he said yes and the rest is history.

 

We shook on it and went on to design and create the LEAFix airway securing device together.  With the support of the Trust RD&I department and 2Bio and Clinical Engineering, leading to collaboration with our Commercial partner Pentland Medical/Innovel Medical.  This commercial partnership and a huge amount of work from everyone involved, has enabled LEAFix to transform from a prototype innovation made out of a piece of Peroni box into an incredibly successful, fully fledged international commercial medical device.  Please click this link to view the LEAFix device..

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