For the second year running, an Amadeus company has won the UK’s most prestigious engineering innovation accolade, the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award.

Optos plc, which designs, develops and manufactures retinal imaging devices and which floated on the London Stock Exchange earlier this year, has been awarded the 2006 Award, following in the steps of Cambridge Silicon Radio, another Amadeus company, which floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2004 and won the MacRobert Award in 2005.

“Optos is a worthy winner and embodies the true spirit of the MacRobert Award. Beginning with a brilliant innovatory concept, Optos has developed a revolutionary diagnostic device by dint of eight years determination, creativity and perseverance in solving the formidable technical problems they met on the way,” said Dr Robin Paul, Chairman of the judging panel for the MacRobert Award. “In the years to come many people will owe their sight to the timely use of this outstanding example of clinical engineering.”

Anne Glover, Amadeus’ CEO said: “We are very proud that two of the companies that we backed from the time they were engineering teams with early product concepts have been judged by their peers to have world-class innovative technologies. Amadeus’ work centres upon identifying such teams with outstanding technologies and helping them to create successful businesses. The MacRobert Award is an endorsement of that process.”