A Scot has received what's seen as the most advanced bionic hand.

The new hand mode, i-LIMB, has five fingers individually powered by separate motors, allowing a better grip and a more realistic look and feel.

Until now, industrial standard prosthetic hands have used the thumb and two fingers to produce a simple claw grip.

The first patient to receive the model, Donald MacKillop, from Largs, Ayrshire, who lost his right hand in an industrial accident nearly 30 years ago, had the hand fitted last week.

Previously, he's tried a succession of artificial hands - but none have come close to the latest version.

Mr MacKillop said he could pick up a glass with his right hand for the first time in decades.

"It's unbelievable. It is so near fingers, you can do anything with it."

"The fact that the fingers can wrap round things, makes life much, much easier."

The i-LIMB hand has been developed by Edinburgh-based company Touch Bionics, and is now being tested at the National Centre for Training and Education in Prosthetics and Orthotics at Strathclyde University.

"In the future, we'll have better control systems so that we'll be able to have individual control of the fingers. That will mean fingers can be moved at will. With the present system they can only move together." said Bill Dykes, the centre's senior lecturer.

I-LIMB is scheduled to go on sale worldwide in April and will cost about £8000.

As yet, bionic hands can't match the dexterity of muscle and bone, and are a far cry from the science fiction of the terminator films.

But Mr MacKillop says at last he feels he now has two hands again.

"At this stage we are focusing on markets where there is available funding to support this early stage product." said Phil Newman, of Touch Bionics, which began developing research for prosthetic solutions for children affected by thalidomide at the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital in Edinburgh in 1963.

Touch Bionics said British and American war casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq could benefit from the bionic hand.

"We have had early stage discussions with a number of clinical centres in the UK that support active and retired soldiers."

"The US is also a significant market for us. There are more than 18,000 upper-limb amputees a year there, excluding the war wounded."