Mark Moran inventor of The Hydrant named as MBE on the Queens Birthday Honours list

There’s an MBE for Mark Moran, inventor of the Hydrant Drinking System, for services to innovation.

The 54-year-old, from Clifton, pictured below, is responsible for developing and distributing the unique hands-free drinking system called The Hydrant, which reduces dehydration in hospital patients, care home residents and people in care at home.

Mark lived with limited movement for months, following surgery on his back in 2005. He noticed how difficult it was to get enough to drink, with the jug and glass by his bed either empty or impossible to reach, lift and hold. He was unable to drink without assistance and was at risk of dehydration.

Most hospitals in the UK now use his product, which received the Queen’s Award for Innovation in 2013.

“To receive that award was incredible, but to get the MBE really is something else,” he said. “It’s recognition of what we have achieved and what I’ve been through over the last decade. I could have just carried on in a well-paid corporate job, and would have been able to retire by now, but I chose to focus on this because I knew it would do a lot of good for a lot of people.

“It’s saved countless patients from dehydration and saved the NHS millions in the process. We have not made a fortune from it commercially – at least, not yet – but it’s great to know how something so relatively simple has changed people’s lives.”