MADISON, Wis. -- A top UW Health transplant surgeon might as well call Shark Tank.  He's invented something that can safely light up any operation.

"You know when we do surgeries we wear a headlight on our heads and the headlight does provide light into the field, which is good but it's so painful to wear, it kills your neck and your back."  Dr. Josh Mezrich said.  After decades of seeing his O.R. team walk around in pain, about two years ago, he began designing the Mezlight — a bed side-rail attached LED snake light.   

"This is gonna allow them to get light where they need it," Dr. Mezrich said.  "They can use it when they need it, they can easily pull it away; it's surgeon controlled, it's gonna be friendly to our backs to our heads. We're not packhorses we got to get the light off our heads," he added.

He believes the Mezlight, a game-changer during these COVID times.

"As we have more and more patients we operate on that have the diagnosis or that we don't know if they have the diagnosis, we have to operate sometimes with face shields.  With those face shields, you can't wear loops and you can't wear headlight. So the Mezlight is going to be a great opportunity for us to get the light off our head and even if we want to protect ourselves as much as possible, we'll still have the kind of lighting that we need the O.R.," he said.

The UW Health collaborative vision is being filed with the FDA and expected to debut in the first quarter of 2021.  There are plans for later versions to feature battery power and much more.

"We're working on putting a camera on it, so that we can do some filming I think every surgeon is going to love that," Dr. Mezrich said.

The Mezlight runs about $50 per used can be sanitized up to 10 times before it needs to be thrown away.

Learn more about the invention, here.