Pictured (l-r) are: Dr Keith O’Neill, Lifescience & Food Commercialisation Director, Enterprise Ireland, Dr Peter Lee, Winner of the Clinical Innovation Award 2012, and Chris Coburn, Executive Director, Cleveland Clinic Innovations.

A smarter epidural has won the 2nd annual Clinical Innovation Award, sponsored by Enterprise Ireland in association with Cleveland Clinic.  The winner, Dr Peter Lee, a consultant anaesthetist with Cork University Hospital, collaborated with University College Cork under their Biomedical Design module to identify a solution for improved epidural delivery. 

The purpose of the Clinical Innovation Award is to tap in to Ireland’s clinical community with a view to developing new healthcare products and services that will improve patient care and benefit both the health care system and Ireland’s medical technologies sector.

Dr Lee and his collaborators have developed a simple, cost effective and globally applicable solution to the problems associated with epidural administration.  This procedure is technically difficult, and requires a clinician to blindly pass the needle into the epidural space for delivery of a local anaesthetic.  Complications include neurologic injury and post-dural puncture headache. For trainee anaesthetists, there is a 1 in 5 failure rate for the first 50 epidurals performed.   Dr Lee will receive a grant of €15,000 and the opportunity to work with Cleveland Clinic and Enterprise Ireland to develop the commercial feasibility of his innovative idea.   

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