Excerpt from oral history with bio-engineer David Gow (DG), interviewed for Lothian Health Services Archive by Carmen Hesketh. Transcription:

DG: “And if you took children’s’ prosthetics as an example, then there was work in America, but what you going to do? How are you going to work in America? ...You have to think who the market is; the market is parents of a child. So you finally have a cuddly baby that’s born with no arms, and you look round and say “well, what’s available for my child?” – The answer is nothing. I can go and get dummy ones fitted on the Health Service; I can go and get anything fitted on the Health Service, you know…children shaking their little dummy arms and legs, but I wanted to see the Health Service as a place where we looked at kids first. You know, if we can’t develop a product for kids, then you won’t develop a product for adults because it won’t grow. And the whole thing about developing a system that grows is you need a module – I thought we’d found it in PRODIGITS because you know, little PRODIGIT finger, that was probably the start of a product arm. But it’s such a complicated field this, because by the time you’ve developed it, the kid’s grown - that’s the truth of it. You have to develop something that keeps going, and it’s something that you develop that may not be suitable for the child that you see in front of you, but in ten years’ time will be suitable for somebody who’s just born, you know. But we haven’t achieved that yet.”