Flexicare Medical Limited

Cardiff University's School of Medicine collaborated with Flexicare Medical to create a pioneering innovation in the field of anaesthetics.

This collaboration lead to the development of a colour-coded interlocking system designed to prevent wrong route injections for patients.

Whilst such accidents are rare, they can be extremely serious, but the patented Hall Lock system eliminates the possibility of wrong route administration via a series of connectors which can only link with the correct fitting, rather than the common locking mechanism currently in use.

Professor Judith Hall is Head of Anaesthetics, Intensive Care and Pain Medicine at Cardiff University and worked closely with the South Wales based company Flexicare Medical Limited who specialise in the manufacture and supply of medical devices to the healthcare sector.  

The Hall Lock product was featured at an Innovation Network event in January 2011 and was officially launched at the BioWales Conference, (March 2011), with a presentation from Hash Poormand, Business Development Director, Flexicare Medical Ltd.

Professor Hall said: "One reason for drug errors in medicine is that humans make mistakes and wrong route administration is a recurrent cause of drug errors.  This can be avoided by the use of connectors that simply make it impossible for drugs meant for one injection route to be given via another route.”

"We needed to stop all these wrong-route injections so I invented a series of connectors that will not fit with any other connector. There’s one shape for intravenous injections and then another different shape for nasogastric tubes, for spinal injection and so on. They should cost less than pennies but they should save lives."  


Further Information
Healthcare Innovation event, with screencasts
Flexicare Medical Limited
Prof Judith Hall
Cardiff University News Story: Improving drug safety
2012 Innovation in Healthcare Award