Profile - Graeme Hall: The boss switched on to creating world-class healthcare systems

HERE'S a question that may stump even the most dedicated soap opera buff.

Where did Emmerdale's Mandy Dingle give birth?

Anybody shouting "on an ITV film studio set" can go straight to the back of the class and watch black and white episodes of Crossroads. The fictional Ms Dingle's offspring made its debut on the premises of Brandon Medical, a place well acquainted with the world of showbusiness.

The award-winning company has its own mock-up of an operating theatre. Apart from giving managing director Graeme Hall the chance to show off the company's impressive range of equipment, it can also serve as a film studio.

So there really was only one place for Mandy Dingle to have her "baby".

"It was good fun for the staff to see how a television programme is made,'' said Mr Hall. "A lot of them stayed behind after work just to watch it. They also helped to organise the equipment."

When the script includes a medical emergency, many film directors call Brandon Medical.

Brandon's mission, however, is deadly serious. The company's hi-tech lighting systems can kill superbugs and help surgeons to remove tumours while doing the minimum of damage to surrounding tissue. It is also improving the quality of medical training. Brandon has devised a system that uses audio and video to allow surgical procedures to be supervised in high definition around the world. As a result, young surgeons can pick up tips from their peers on another continent.

The Leeds-based company has proved that hi-tech manufacturing is alive and kicking in Britain.

If the company hits its growth targets, turnover could rise from 6m to 50m in 2020, while staff numbers are set to increase from 40 to at least 70 between now and 2013.

"There are some fantastic manufacturing skills in the UK,'' said Mr Hall, who is proud of the fact that many of his staff live within walking distance of the factory.

"There's a lot more innovation coming out of our country than you see in most of Asia. That's something we need to protect and build on.

"The majority of modern manufacturing jobs are highly skilled and highly rewarding. We find people come here from retail and find this is a really interesting environment to work in. It's satisfying to make something that has an ethical background. You are making something that benefits your country and community."

A modest man who would rather put the spotlight on his workforce, Mr Hall acknowledges that the company was in a poor state when the current team took control in 1993.

He recalled: "We were looking for a business that was involved in electrical and mechanical engineering. The fact it was healthcare was an accident. We started by establishing a proper, professional management team. We always had a policy of not copying other people, but doing our own thing."

Brandon has recently started production in India under an agreement with Trivitron Healthcare, which is India's biggest medical technology provider.

The deal, which included an initial 1.36m investment by Brandon, has allowed the company to make theatre lights in a new manufacturing plant

at Trivitron's medical park in Chennai.

"The operation in India was part of our general expansion,'' said Mr Hall.

"The reason for India was the quality of the partner we met there. Most people were looking at China at the time. We liked India because of the language and the culture."

According to Mr Hall, Brandon's most exciting project has been its work on the new surgical skill centres in Coventry and Newcastle.

Mr Hall said: "Brandon has been involved in designing the whole scheme with the professors of surgery so that it delivers a world-class system

for teaching the surgeons of tomorrow.

"It's trying to develop systems of teaching people that don't involve junior doctors spending hundreds of hours a week

in training.

"We've got a limited number of hours to teach people now. We've got to teach people so they are learning away from patients. They will become skilled before they actually go into the operating theatre.

"It's developed from the traditional teaching of somebody doing a job and somebody watching. It's not one to one, or one to many, it's many to many. You can communicate across a network of individuals."

He believes there is great potential to improve health care by merging audio-visual information with other data.

But couldn't the looming public sector spending cuts take the wind out of Brandon's sails?

"We have already seen some cuts,'' said Mr Hall. "But we have a fresh product range and are expanding into new markets. We're winning more market share in our domestic market. The market is large. For a small and growing company, we see plenty of opportunities.

We're not too worried that the market for the larger companies is shrinking.

"We've got major areas of technological development. These are high-definition LED lighting technologies, and the expansion of our medical

audio visual systems. The third one is the integration of digital facilities."

We've all heard horrific tales of premature deaths caused by a communication breakdown. Mr Hall believes errors and misunderstandings can be reduced by using technology.

He added: "A lot of healthcare systems aren't incredibly well connected. There's an opportunity to create huge improvements in healthcare by connecting the information systems to the medical data."

It should be possible to integrate information from data such as MRI, ultrasound, X-rays and patient records, said Mr Hall.

"There are massive efficiency improvements that can be gained, and there are huge improvements in clinical governance because we can show things have actually been done and checked consistently,'' he added.

"We can identify where people are failing to do that and the training they need so they can do their jobs properly.

"It's almost the equivalent of a black box flight recorder on an aircraft. We can trace what went wrong and we can trace near-misses. We can identify how to put things right.

"The patient should be in a position where the people who are working on them have been trained properly and safety procedures are followed."

Mandy Dingle isn't the only patient who will have cause to thank Brandon Medical

GRAEME HALL

Title: Managing director of Brandon Medical

Date of birth: December 3, 1962

Education: Boston Spa Comprehensive, Nottingham University where he studied manufacturing and engineering, and Cranfield University

Last book read: Maverick, which is about a Brazilian businessman

Car driven: Aston Martin

Favourite film: The Dambusters

Favourite song: Jerusalem