Small-screen vision helps Aircraft Medical take market by the throat (The Financial Times)
Posted on Mon 7th July 2008
LONDON, July 7, 2008 - “Aircraft Medical, an Edinburgh-based medical devices company, has signed agreements with distributors in 19 countries worth an estimated $115m (£58m) in sales during the next five years. Matt McGrath, the company's 30-year-old chief executive, founded the company seven years ago to make a product that he had developed as an award-winning student of industrial design. The McGrath video laryngoscope is used by paramedics and anaesthetists to help insert a tube into the patient's throat to control breathing. A small screen on the device's handle allows them to do this without damaging teeth, throat tissues or vocal chords. Because it is powered by a single AA battery, the device is fully portable - unlike some rival products that need mains power and separate display screens.
Aircraft Medical started producing the devices, which sell for $9,000 each, only 18 months ago, but the company already claims a third of the US market for video laryngoscopes. "It has taken the US market by storm," said Mr McGrath. "Individual doctors are buying them with their own pay cheques because they are such useful devices." Living on a shoestring while he developed the product, Mr McGrath became adept at juggling debts on his credit cards. However, he has now received a total of £2.5m of backing from eight private investors and the Wellcome Trust, and a further £1.5m in government grants.
Mr McGrath said he was under "absolutely no pressure" to go to the market or find a buyer from the company and was instead working on a seven-year plan to build market share. The US, where the product was launched, at present accounts for 80 per cent of Aircraft Medical's sales, but this proportion will diminish as sales from the company's European distribution network increase.
Aircraft Medical has 20 staff and a further 100 people [sic.] work at the factory in Fife where the laryngoscopes are assembled. Mr McGrath, who was born in the Hebridean island of Benbecula, said that Edinburgh had proved a good place to base his company. "The quality of staff I have been able to find has been excellent," he said.
By Andrew Bolger