Dr Kin Kam

He is hoping his sports cap, which allows people to secure their spectacles or sunglasses below the peak, will catapult his company, Inclusive Innovations Ltd, into the prizes at today’s finals of the China UK Entrepreneurship Challenge.

No doubt judges will marvel at how the iicap, which also comes as a clip-on accessory to conventional caps, will allow people playing tennis, badminton or golf to keep a steady eye on the ball; or if you are a sweaty-nosed gardener this summer you can lean over the trowel without your specs falling into fertiliser.

There are other inventions by Hong Kong-born Dr Kam, of Blakeney Place, York, that judges will consider, including his latest invention, a gismo which guides nurses to inject into veins without puncturing them – a concept achieved in a collaboration with the health technology group at the electronic department of the University of York. Senior research staff there used high-speed photographic analysis to study the action of the process of vein puncture to help create the guiding system.

Quite separately, Dr Kam has already invented a time-programmable Reminder Smart Card, which bleeps a warning of an impending hospital appointment. He believes the device could save the NHS about £250 million a year in missed appointments. It is these kinds of collaborations which form the basis of Dr Kam’s pitch for the Best Business And Higher Education Link title in The Press Business Awards 2008.

But it is the iicap – at one time rejected by the Dragon’s Den team – which is now closest to being commercially produced. Latest collaboration on this is with a product designer who lectures at the department of engineering at Liverpool University.

Dr Kam said: “Co-operation with academia is essential for any inventor. They have all kinds of expertise to help take a brilliant idea and turn it into a practical product.”