4th January 2012

E2L Products – January’s MediWales Featured Member

Multiskilled design engineers, taking ideas from inception to product since 1998.

E2L limited are award winning innovators with a track record of bespoke design, joint ventures, collaboration with the NHS, and self-generated medical products. In particular they have been responsible for the technical design behind such products as ShakerScope, MegaBee, and a series of products badge engineered by Honeywell.

Incorporating electronic, mechanical, bio-chemical and industrial design skills, the company’s business model enables a complete service from ideas through to manufacture and marketing.

Whilst many projects are direct commission or self generated, our main focus is on joint ventures, particularly with the NHS. This normally takes a clinical need, sometimes ‘blue skies’, sometimes ‘proof of principle’, and through our flexible funding options facilitates a route to final product. This model applies equally to individuals with the ‘big idea’, private companies or institutions.

E2L has often found government backed NHS/academic collaborations failing after initial feasibility stages due to the lack of second round funding paths or not having sufficient commercial focus. E2L’s willingness to take on funding risks in development, coupled with a system approach to its design process has injected new life into such projects and fulfilled clinical needs that would have otherwise simply wouldn’t have happened.

Two recent examples of this type of activity are:

The ‘Bristol Urodynamics Trainer’; a simulated urodynamics machine which was developed after initial work undertaken by Bristol Urology Institute at Southmead Hospital (www.urodynamicstrainer.com). This gives unique provision of ‘off-patient’ training, facilitating improved urodynamics diagnosis. It is the only product to comply with the ICS training requirements because of its brand independence.

The ‘Frenchay Alphabet Board’; a simple communication board for non-vocal users with essential tremor for Frenchay Hospital (www.fab.uk.com). This offers a vast reduction in professional SLT time spent making paper equivalents. It offers particular advantages for Parkinson’s users to communicate, and has inherent infection control.

Both these products are now in market and generating licence income for the NHS. In both cases, project start to marketable product was less than 9 months.

Speculative product designs by the Company have also produced innovative solutions. In particular their ‘MegaBee’ eye-gaze system has become a major alternative solution in the provision of rapid, frequent communication equipment for people who cannot talk or write legibly (www.megabee.co.uk). The fresh approach avoided all the ‘function creep’ of the existing suppliers in the AAC marketplace and resulted in a simple, low cost and much faster communication tool.

As for the future – the company has a number of current projects. Of particular note is another NHS collaboration, this time with Bradford Royal Infirmary to develop a post-operative training aid for hip and knee joint replacement patients. This product should reduce bed stay by one day per patient and present a saving of £5.6M.

Lyndon Owen
Managing Director

E2L Products Limited
www.E2L.uk.com