Doctors with commercial interests.

I offer this “case report” and cautionary note to dedicated doctors with inventive minds.

For many years in UK medicine, the most publicly trusted profession, I investigated intravesical treatments, initially with #atropine for #neurogenic LUTS, finding it safe, effective, systemic #sideeffects free, valuable to patients and desired by them. Trial subjects preferred it to popping side-effect rich pills for their #urinaryurgency (UU). But without a #licensed delivery device, prescribing for self-administration in the community today is challenging and professionally risky.

Clearly, the quality of #bladdertreatments through oral/systemic delivery generally fall below standards we want and often are detrimental to patients and healthcare widely, e.g with #AMR progressing via oral #antibiotics for treating #cystitis. Additionally, oral #antimuscarinics for treating UU (OAB and neurogenic urgency) predispose to #dementia, especially amongst the elderly and people with #MS. Well established in the medical research literature and appreciated in urology is that bladders do better when targeted directly (N.b. adjuvant cancer chemotherapy and botulinum toxin).

This set me inventing and then on a mission to provide a drug-delivery catheter to enable direct bladder targeting under licence for self-administration, community-based treatments and surgery.

I’ve also sat on many healthcare-improvement panels and committees and was a founding trustee of healthcare charities, now long-established. However, having co-founded UroPharma, a med-tech company, backed by doctors wanting the new technology to better treat the commonest bladder conditions and diseases, I’m now disqualified from offering my specialist knowledge in certain official quarters, indicating a lack of trust after over 43 years in this profession. Nevertheless, I’m trusted to be with patients!

The government relies on and encourages commercial healthcare enterprise, as it’s the most efficient way to bring new treatments to the masses, so I remain undaunted as an innovator, but question the irony.