Prince Charles tried his hand at some surgical skills today as he opened an innovative surgery centre at St Mary’s Hospital.
The Prince of Wales went for a tour around the Surgical Innovation Centre this morning and was shown new inventions which surgeons are using to make operations quicker and easier.
Visiting the HELIX (Health Innovation Exchange) pop-up studio at the hospital in Paddington he got shown an app being used to measure children’s breathing to help asthma and a new way of taking stool samples, which made him blush.
Following his tour of the centres he said: “I was fascinated going around, trying to understand how you managed to create all these innovative inventions. My great great great grandfather, Prince Albert would have been very proud.”
He spoke to a patient who had scarless keyhole surgery at the centre, just one of the innovative surgeries.
Julia Lonsdale, 65, a former nurse at St Mary’s Lindo wing where Prince George was born, was the first person to have her bowel cancer operated on using Single Incision Laparoscopic Surgery at the centre through her belly button.
She said: “I’m so lucky, with NHS screening they found a cancerous tumour and if I hadn’t had the operation I wouldn’t be alive now.
“I was only in hospital for three nights. I have a huge amount to be grateful and thankful for, you can’t see any scar at all.”
Over the past year, nearly 2,000 patients have been treated at the centre which is aiming to improve patient experience by speeding up the whole process.
The prince was fascinated with the low cost pop-up theatre designed with Imperial College alongside military doctors which now means surgery can be performed anywhere as the theatre blows up in three minutes to create a room.
He also spoke to the designer of the ‘cyclops’, a small ring which goes around miniature pliers and blows up inside the body to help remove growths - the first of its kind in the world.
Prince Charles had a go at teaching aids in the hospital, using tiny pincers to pick up chic peas and move them around and was also impressed with the full-scale digital touch-screen skeleton now being used instead of cadavers. It showed that maybe he does not have an iPad at home as he was not familiar with touch-screen, but was still fascinated.
Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham showed the Prince around in his role as director of the institute of global health innovation at Imperial College London. He said: “We are delighted the Prince of Wales visited the centre.
“The NHS is under considerable pressure in meeting the challenge of shifting patient demographics, the burden of life style disease and financial constraints. Innovation through better technologies, processes and design can help address the challenges facing health care delivery globally.”
The centre is a collaboration between Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial College and the HELIX pop-up was also a collaboration with the Royal College of Art.
