“BUILT IN the garage: how kidney doctor put together home-made dialysis machine to save baby” was definitely the most heartwarming headline of the week.

Millie Kelly went into kidney failure after emergency surgery to correct an abnormality soon after her birth. Tiny newborns are not able to use normal dialysis machines so Malcolm Coulthard, a paediatrician, built a machine for her in his garage. Thanks to his home-made kit, Millie survived.

The story ran as if it showed the NHS in crisis, with Heath Robinson machines having to be made out of paper clips and sticky-back plastic. There was also a strong inference that such invention was an unusual event in the NHS.

In fact, the NHS contains some incredibly inventive people. For a start there are more than 50,000 NHS healthcare scientists. Although hardly known to the British public, they make up the third largest science workforce in the world. From audiologists to medical physicists, pathologists to rehab engineers, specialists in more than 50 disciplines do the NHS's testing, measuring and checking. Very often they do its inventing too because they sit between medical research and the patient. They see what's needed and make it happen, often by developing completely new devices. A device made by Tony Whittingham, a clinical scientist, for example, sharpens ultrasound images of the back of the eye, greatly improving diagnosis.

Surgeons are also known as innovators. They develop new widgets or bits of surgical kit shaped a certain way to make a difficult operation easier and safer for the patient.

Many hip prosthetics bear the name of the surgeon - the McKee Farrar for example - who invented it. Cardiac surgeons in particular are renowned for inventing new surgical bits and pieces to make cardiac surgery better. And it was a cardiologist who invented the first medical treadmill to assess the impact of exercise on the heart.

Very little of this prodigious amount of NHS invention was ever introduced into the health service in a systematic way. But now there is an NHS National Innovation Centre, funded by both health and science government departments.

Inventive medics make an online assessment of their gadget on its website. If the gizmo looks promising, nine innovation hubs around Britain identify bright ideas and help inventors with getting the right intellectual property deal and with getting their device into the NHS.

Last year, the innovation hubs assessed more than 1,000 ideas, of which 400 became active projects, producing 54 licensing deals and three new spin-off companies, such as Touch Bionics with its electrically powered replacement arm.

So far from the NHS being in crisis, its level of invention shows that it's in very good shape. And Mr Coulthard, who is from Newcastle, should talk to NHS Innovations as soon as possible.

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