A MILLIONAIRE from York has won the exclusive right to market a revolutionary tablet-sized video-camera designed to be swallowed.

Richard Edmondson, of The White House in Main Street, Fulford, managing director of Thirsk-based Diagmed, has already sold four of the tiny use-then-flush-away digital camera systems at a cost of £26,300 each to four hospitals, two in London and in Liverpool and Glasgow.

The £300 camera pill - with £26,000 film receptor worn on the patient's stomach - produces perfect "broadcast quality" images for eight hours.

It travels painlessly along the 22 feet of small intestine, clearly showing tumours, lesions or evidence of Crohn's disease.

It is a method which avoids discomfort suffered by patients with suspected gastrointestinal disease who undergo radiology, endoscopy, or even ultrasound, which often produces far too fuzzy an image for a reliable diagnosis.

Because the patient can take the pill one day, go to work and return the next day, it frees up the physician's time.

Mr Edmondson's booming Diagmed enterprise at Thirsk Industrial Park allowed him to invest in property and then retire early to the U.S., while maintaining his yacht in southern Spain.

But he hardly had time to put his feet up when he discovered Given Imaging and was excited by it to the point where he came out of retirement, returned to York, and pitched for and won the marketing contract from Israeli-based Given Imaging's European office in Hamburg.

He believes that the camera pill has multi-million pound potential. "This is probably going to be one of the most interesting products that has hit the medical arena for 20 years.

"Patients will hear about it and tell their GPs and patient demand will eventually lead to hospital demand," he predicted.

Updated: 09:19 Wednesday, February 13, 2002