Wha's like us... Matt McGrath

YOU may never have heard of him, but one day he may just save your life.

Now a successful Edinburgh-based businessman, in 1999 McGarth was a design student in Newcastle when he entered a Royal Society of the Arts contest to come up with a new laryngoscope, the device doctors use to get oxygen to the lungs of patients whose airways are blocked. Educated in Benbecula and Kingussie, McGarth studied the instruments then being used and came up with a better shape and a camera to guide medics, speeding up the emergency procedure and reducing the trauma to patients.

McGarth won the prize but it took several years – including a spell working in an Edinburgh wine shop – before grants and enough business was attracted to get a workable device into manufacture. Today, Aircraft Medical has five years' worth of orders to make the devices in Dalgety Bay.

McGarth's laryngoscope is now helping to save lives in 17 countries. It is also proof that Scotland's fine tradition of invention continues today.