Dr Marc Spinoza, who lives in Cuffley, Herts, and is a paediatrician at Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London, has just achieved a breakthrough in getting his ingenious invention approved for use in hospitals throughout Europe.

Marc Spinoza's patented invention is a quicker and safer way of attaching the tubes that hospital patients have going into them. It has already been tested successfully and approved for use in British hospitals. Having just won the approval of the European CE Mark, his BRAIDLOCK invention can now be used throughout Europe - a vast market of over 500 million.

The BRAIDLOCK is a short, braided sleeve that tubes (or 'lines') go through. It is attached to the patient by two small sutures, by an integral adhesive patch or by a Velcro tape. It's easy to push a tube through the BRAIDLOCK into the patient, but very hard indeed for it to be pulled back out unintentionally. If the line does need to be adjusted, the doctor or nurse simply squeezes the device lightly and the tube can be moved easily, without having to remove or redo sutures or sticking plaster.

Marc Spinoza's inspiration for his invention was a children's toy: the Chinese finger trap - a braided tube that allows a child to push a finger into it only to discover that no amount of tugging will get the finger out

As a young doctor with a family, Marc had to remortgage his house to raise the money he needed to develop his invention, get it patented and approved for use in hospitals…