Lives are being saved in the war with Iraq - thanks to a Bradford's company's innovation.

TSG Associates has created a special triage tag which helps armed forces medics to quickly establish the most badly-injured servicemen.

Called the Smart Tag, it is attached to a casualty by medics to immediately identify who needs priority treatment. It also has a special folded design which enables it to be used in battlefield conditions.

The Smart Tag is already widely used by the British Army and many emergency services in this country.

Now TSG, which is based in Tong, is looking to the United States and further afield for orders with help from Business Link for West Yorkshire and West Yorkshire Targeted Export Support (WYTES).

TSG director Simon Pennells said: "Our reputation in the UK is second to none and we work closely with the majority of emergency services in the UK as well as the British Army. We operate in a niche market and had increasingly taken the view that we needed to consider our options in foreign markets."

After Mr Pennells identified key target markets, WYTES provided a grant to enable the company to do further research and help fund a trip to the USA where the company exhibited at the National Disaster Management Conference in Atlanta. There TSG won new business and hopes to continue to develop interests across America. The grant from WYTES was used to fund travel, accommodation, market research, exhibition costs and marketing advice.

The Smart Tag is a key component of TSG's Smart Incident Management System (SIMS), said Mr Pennells. "SIMS is a complete system proven to maximise survivors in a mass-casualty event and is currently in use with ambulance services worldwide and it is standard throughout the British Army," he said.

Business Link, which provides support and advice to a wide range of businesses in the region, worked closely with TSG on a wide range of issues - from manufacturing, design and marketing. David Hughes, international trade manager at Business Link, said: "It is important that innovative companies like TSG take advantage of world markets and we were happy to help them put in place an export sales strategy which would bring real bottom line benefits to their business."

Mr Pennells said: "WYTES funding has provided us with a lot of support, particularly in developing our sales and marketing initiatives in the US. It invested a lot of time in trying to understand our business and the long-term goals of the company. We are grateful for its support.

"We have opened up several new markets and we regard exports as crucial to our continued growth and an important by-product of our expansion will be future job development in the area."