Could adapting our sinks combat super bugs?

We’ve all been there – you see something that isn’t perfect and you think “There must be a better way?” but most of the time we get caught up in what we are doing and never find that innovative solution.

That’s not the case for Dr James Soothill, a Consultant in Microbiology at GOSH, who sought to solve the issue of super bug bacteria (like MRSA) living in hospital sink plug holes.

He recently worked with our Innovation and Business Development team to file GOSH’s first solely-owned patent application after he had an idea to reduce this issue.

James shared with us his process from idea to the 'Tuba drain', as it is now called:

“My work is all about bacterial infection and colonisation. How they live and crucially how they persist.

“My office door has a window that looks out at a sink. Every day I see people using it, on and off. The water comes out of the tap, and runs down the plug hole, as is normal. But we know that sinks can harbour a lot of bacteria. And we know that hospitals across the world are doing all they can to keep strains of resistant bacteria out of their wards and clinics – so called ‘super-bugs’ like MRSA.

“The good thing is that our sinks are regularly cleaned and this helps to limit infection, but what about the plug hole? It’s really difficult to clean deep into a plug hole and even then, the water that sits in a U-bend is a perfect breeding ground for bacteria that can spread in a bio-film or be splashed back into the sink when the tap is turned on, spreading the bacteria.

“During lock down, I had an idea to develop a new kind of device that can be fitted to a sink so that there is no standing water sitting under the plug hole. The hope is that this stops bugs like E coli growing in a place that can easily spread to the sink and, ultimately, the people that use them. In laboratory tests the device, now called a Tuba drain, because of its shape prevented bacteria in the U-bend from reaching the section of pipe that connects to the sink."

James shared with us the process of filing a patent for the product:

“David Chapman-Jones from the Innovation and Business Development team here at GOSH put me in touch with industry experts and external legal teams that helped us to work out if we could patent a device like this and if there was a market that would be worthwhile. We all worked together to check the existing intellectual property rights to be clear this new U-bend was a unique idea. It appeared to be, so we proceeded with preparing and filing a patent application.

“Filing a patent application is a first step, and we now need to take it through all the subsequent steps, as well as consider filing further patent applications to protect the invention overseas. The whole process is expensive, not to mention building some prototypes and testing them, so we applied for a UK Innovate Grant. We were awarded £26,000 for one year of work and we have now tested the new device in Falcon Outpatients in the Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children.

"Sinks with the device fitted had lower level of resistant species of bacteria than the standard sinks without the device."

Dr David Chapman Jones, Deputy Lead for Business Development in the NIHR GOSH Biomedical Research Centre said about the project:

“I’m so pleased that we have been able to support James to make his idea a reality. It’s great news that we have a patent application that belongs to GOSH and we have now tested the device, but the main thing is that this could help patients at GOSH, other hospitals and across the world by reducing potential source of infection. Happily we have now found a manufacturer that can produce them at low cost. A first batch is being made now.”

“Sometimes when people think of Innovation, they assume it’s going to be a very high-tech solution or something incredibly complex, but we are all experts in our own lives and work, and can come up with elegant, yet simple, solutions and innovations all the time. In the Innovation and Business Development team, we can help staff to navigate the tricky process and turn these ideas into a reality.”

The Tuba Drain has been through some steps that will help the team to work out just how much it can have an impact in GOSH and beyond. For example they are working with a manufacturer with the right accreditation who can create the device safely and reproducibly. Having the Tuba Drain installed in more sinks will allow the team to build on their early data (soon to be published) to define if cleaner plug-holes can lead to lower rates of infections with super-bugs.

If the Tuba Drain becomes a success, you could be unknowingly using it at an airport, school or hotel one day – all developed from a ‘germ’ of an idea from a doctor at GOSH who worked with our Innovation and Business development team.

The Innovation and Business Development team is part of our NIHR GOSH Biomedical Research Centre and you can contact them on brc@gosh.nhs.uk or, if you are a member of staff at GOSH, enter any new idea into the Ideas platform.

We want to create an environment where all of our staff feel empowered to be innovators. Via our staff intranet (Our GOSH), colleagues are able to submit their ideas to the GOSH Ideas Platform where they will be discussed by a multidisciplinary team including DRIVE, Quality, Transformation and ICT.

The triage team then work directly with submitter to sign-post to existing solutions or work with them develop new ones.