An Irish woman has won an award for her invention to help patients prevent hair loss during chemotherapy, inspired by her own mother’s cancer battle. The James Dyson Award gives two inventors £30,000 for solutions to problems of global importance in medicine and sustainability. The international student design competition, which has supported more than 400 inventions from young engineers and scientists worldwide, received nearly 2,000 entries this year.
This year’s winner in the medical category is 24-year-old designer Olivia Humphreys, from Limerick , and her invention Athena – an affordable and portable scalp-cooling device for patients going through chemotherapy. The device is expected to be a fraction of the cost of existing technologies and can be carried around, meaning patients spend less time on hospital wards. Around 65-99% of patients going through chemotherapy will be affected by chemo-induced hair loss.
Cooling the scalp before, during and after chemotherapy can mitigate hair loss and help hair grow back faster and stronger, but it can be painful for patients and is limited due to extremely high costs. Scalp cooling is available in eight hospitals in Ireland , but is expensive and can require additional hospital staff to fit the equipment and keep patients in hospital for longer. Ms Humphreys came up with her thermoelectric invention after her mother Vicky, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2019, began losing her hair during her treatment.
Ms Humphreys said:.