Product strengths;

Protected extensively with patent and design rights. (Under process)

The product was designed with continued input from professional carers and higher level industry leaders. So far, the product has been received with enthusiasm by patients, carers and industry advisors.

It addresses the needs of many people, hospitals, care homes, elderly living at home, the able and the disabled.

Item should cost around £20 (Cost price). Especialy in the medical arena there is a high chance that a 200% mark up would be acceptable.

No other product is directly competitive, if anything the main competition is a simple water jug or apathy. The only alternative is to employ a member of staff to record, check and encourage water consumption.

No other (non intravenous) product regulates a patient’s water input.

The alarm starts off as a preventative measure to gently remind the patient but changes into an alarm for the carer if insufficient water is drunk. No other product does this. Currently it is very hard to identify patients who are not drinking.

The product is gravity fed allowing severely disabled patients to use the device helping the patient keep their independence. It aids tube feeding with positive pressure. Almost all other solutions are based on a jug system.

If the device cost £500,000 to put into full production it would only take 1 in 50 UK care homes to use the device for the start up cost to be recovered. (500,000 beds, 200% mark-up). The UK market is small and primary markets would be abroad - US, Europe, Japan...