FATAL errors made when injecting drugs into patients could be eradicated by a made-in-Wales invention.
 

Devised by Professor Judith Hall and manufactured in the South Wales Valleys, the Hall Lock system could become commonplace in hospitals around the world.

The failsafe system consists of small pieces of plastic, which cost less than a penny and prevent healthcare staff from mistakenly injecting drugs and other substances into the wrong part of the body.
 

Prof Hall was influenced by the tragic death of a patient in Wales who had air injected into a vein instead of into a nasogastric tube. There have also been fatal mistakes involving the chemotherapy drug Vincristine – patients have died after it was wrongly injected into the spine rather than a vein.
 

The Hall Lock system, manufactured by Flexicare, which is based in Mountain Ash, is a series of simple colour-coded connectors, which make it impossible for substances to be mistakenly injected into the wrong part of the body.

Prof Hall, a former Welsh Woman of the Year and head of anaesthetics, intensive care and pain medicine at Cardiff University, came up with the idea of creating a series of unique locks while on a trip to the US a few years ago.

“One reason for drug errors in medicine is that humans make mistakes and wrong route administration is a recurrent cause of drug errors,” she said.

“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.”

She has patented the design, which is now in production.