DUBLIN:Necessity may be the mother of invention but mothering for the first time was the spark that led Anne Marie Durkin to develop and launch the world's first pre-sterilised, ready-to-go soother.

She got the idea when she was in hospital with her first child. She was about to give him a soother when the nurse quickly stopped her and told her it needed to be sterilised.

"There was so much work involved with a new baby, I just thought a ready sterilised soother would make my life less stressful," she said.

"When I came home on maternity leave, I started to do some searches to see if I could get some . . . I did patent searches and, to my absolute amazement, I couldn't find a pre-sterilised soother anywhere in the world."

Aware that many medical products such as needles and syringes come pre-sterilised, Durkin carried out a research and feasibility study on manufacturing a pre-sterilised soother and found it was possible. She immediately set about commercialising a product, Steri-Soother.

The soother is manufactured in Germany and sterilised with Gamma Radiation technology in Isotron, Westport, where the majority of products for the pharmaceutical industry are sterilised.

After taking two years to develop the concept, brand identity, logo and carry out market research and sterility testing, Durkin launched her business, Shasta, in August.

As well as getting more than 900 calls from Irish pharmacists, she has been approached by UK distributors with an order for more that 100,000 soothers for the likes of Mothercare and Sainsbury's. And she's already working on a second product.