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The Peezy story: a case of angels, origami and innovation

Asking a female patient to provide a mid-stream urine sample can result in difficulty, embarrassment and poor hygiene. Now, a simple invention is set to improve infection control and enhance the patient experience.

One rainy evening in 2000, at the end of a busy day in his surgery, GP Dr Vincent Forte mused with his sister, Giovanna, over the number of women patients who had berated him that day for requesting a urine sample – and giving them a standard universal container to do it in. “They all complained,” he worried. “They said that the idea of delivering a sample into such a narrow bottle could only have come from a man. I’m fed up. There must be a solution to this.” Giovanna replied “You were always making things when we were children, so make something. Go on, sort it out.”

Rising to the challenge
So Vincent spent a few hours cutting up bits of paper and sticking them together in funnel shapes. He made one that he liked, that worked with the universal container that his female patients didn’t like. Pleased, he called it the Female Freedom Funnel. Then he put it in a drawer and forgot about it.

From idea to reality
Fast-forward to 2009 and Peezy is a disposable, hygienic and elegant mid-stream urine collection device for use by women when they deliver a urine sample for analysis. It is selling in the NHS and private sectors, with agents generating sales in Europe, South East Asia and the Middle East. Now, moves are afoot to enter markets in the USA, Australia and Eastern Europe.

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