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Scottish trio take inventor title
Three Scotsmen have won the title European Inventor of the Year for taking the pain and discomfort out of medical eye examinations.
Douglas Anderson, Robert Henderson and Roger Lucas were named at an awards ceremony in Slovenia for work which the judges said had made a significant difference to ordinary lives.
Europe's Industry Commissioner Gunter Verheugen, presenting the awards, said their work had certainly changed his own life, thanks to laser-scanning technology which allows powerful but totally pain-free examination of the retina.
Industrial designer Douglas Anderson set to work after his five-year-old son Leif went blind in one eye because laborious and invasive traditional eye scans meant a detached retina was detected too late.
Doctors told Mr Anderson how difficult it was to give small children in particular a complicated and unpleasant eye check-up. So he took the problem back to his engineering firm, Crombie Anderson, vowing to find a thorough, painless way of checking eye problems.
He received the award in Ljubljana for the best research invention by a small business. The annual awards were being presented for the third time jointly by the European Patent Office and the European Commission.
The three Scotsman, Mr Anderson, of Clackmannanshire, optical engineer Robert Henderson, of Edinburgh and Roger Lucas, of Kirkcaldy, patented their invention and dubbed it Optomap, a laser retinal scanner which helps doctors examine the back of the eye with ease.
The non-invasive test takes just a quarter of a second, using low-powered laser beams to create digital images of more than 80% of the retina, compared with a scan of only 5% possible under conventional check-ups.
The Optomap also does away with the need for dilation drops in the eye - and crucially for Mr Anderson, removes the distress endured by young children undergoing the original, less effective, and lengthier examination.
The scanner is marketed through Optos, the renowned Scottish eyecare technology company set up by Mr Anderson in 1992 and based in Dunfermline, Fife. It now has offices in America, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain and Switzerland and was successfully launched on the Stock Exchange in February 2006.

Scottish trio take inventor title - Latest News - MSN Tech & Gadgets UK

Oh look, the Scots invent another thing. Somebody stop us!