"The world's first commercially available bionic hand has been recognised as one of the top inventions of 2008. The hand, created by Livingston company Touch Bionics, was named alongside the Super Hadron Collider in Time magazine's top 50 innovations.

It came in at 14th place, beating competition from the latest Mars Rover, designed to explore the red planet. The hand took 20 years to develop and has five separately working fingers.

This makes it more versatile than previous hands, which have often been hook-like and limited to simple opening and closing movements.

The i-limb hand has a much wider range of capabilities. It has a credit-card grip, for taking hold of narrow objects, and a power hold for larger objects such as mugs. "