A DERBY business is hoping to help health staff and patients by reducing noise in surgeries and waiting rooms.

Elite Commercial Interiors, of Osmaston Road, is an interior design company which specialises in what it calls "acoustic engineering".

This involves limiting noise by absorbing it using filler in walls or dense panels, blocking it using screens and masking it with specialist speakers.

Peter Timbrell, managing director of parent organisation Workplace Consultancy Services, hopes to work with private hospitals first.

He said: "Conversations, televisions, telephones, medical equipment and procedures and mechanical and paging systems are just some of the sources that ensure noise is ever-present in most healthcare facilities.

"That noise can contribute to stress experienced by patients, visitors and staff."