A 16-year-old teenager on work experience at Barts Hospital in London has devised an an award-winning system to save heart attack victims.

Ben Wald, 16, came up with the idea of surgeons inserting a 'code' into the chest of patients so that future doctors would know what happened during previous operations.

Around one in 10 heart attack patients have previously undergone open-heart bypass surgery but cardiologists are often forced to operate quickly without knowing the full details of where the heart has been 'replumbed' before.

Without that knowledge it can be dangerous as doctors could end up operating at an unhelpful location.

Ben, an A-level student at Dulwich College, suggested that the surgeon could leave a message inside the patient's chest to indicate the number of heart grafts and their location.