A SCIENTIST at a North-East hospital has won a medical award for work developing a revolutionary blood monitoring device.

Dr David Harrison, of the University Hospital of North Durham, was awarded the Manufacturer's Prize by the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.

It recognises Dr Harrison's efforts developing a blood oxygen monitoring system at the hospital's medical physics department.

The institute hailed his work as offering, "a significant contribution to the technology associated with medical physics, or clinical engineering".

He believes it is possible his device could one day routinely help surgeons during and after operations, as well as predicting the risks of their patients developing serious infections.

His monitor shines light into human tissue to work out how much oxygen is being supplied to that area.

The monitor can differentiate oxygen-rich blood being carried from the lungs in arteries and blood flowing through the veins, spent of oxygen.

Dr Harrison has developed a reliable means of calculating the oxygen saturation of the tissue.

"We first developed the idea in 1996 and it has proved a very good way to monitor, non-invasively, the levels of oxygen in various parts of the body.

"There are dozens of potential applications in medicine for this kind of technology and I'm delighted to have been awarded this prize."

The monitor is already being used, successfully, in amputation operations and breast reconstruction surgery at the University Hospital of North Durham.

Further potential uses are also being developed at the hospital.

Dr Harrison has worked in Durham in recent years, since transferring from a previous post in Dundee.

He was not the only award winners from the Regional Medical Physics Department, serving North-East and Cumbrian hospitals.

Dr Michael Firbank, of Newcastle General Hospital, won the Founders Prize, for distinction in the practice of physics or engineering in relation to medicine.