Limerick woman wins international award for device that reduces chemo-induced hair loss
Olivia Humphreys (right) created a scalp cooling device for cancer patients getting chemo after watching her own mum Vicky's (left) experience undergoing treatment.
A Limerick graduate who was influenced to create a more accessible way to fight chemo-induced hair loss by her mother’s experience undergoing chemotherapy treatment has won a prestigious international award for her work.
Olivia Humphreys has been named a global winner of the James Dyson award, the first Irish winner of the competition since it launched in 2006, picking up €38,000 from the James Dyson Foundation.
Olivia, who is currently working with medical device company Luminate in Galway after finishing up her studies at the University of Limerick, said she was “absolutely shocked” to hear she had won this year’s competition.
"It was a surprise phone call, and I was in the middle of work so it was absolute chaos and I had to just leave and go and dunk my head in the sea.”
Her device, named ‘Athena’ after the Ancient Greek warrior goddess, was influenced by her mother Vicky’s experiences of undergoing chemotherapy at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) in 2019.
“Hair loss one of the key things she was anxious about, and sad and worried about," Olivia explained.
During treatment screening, a nurse advised her about scalp cooling, a technique that involves applying ice cold temperatures to the scalp before, during and after chemotherapy, mitigating hair loss by shrinking blood vessels and limiting blood flow.
It is not widely known about as the availability of treatment here is limited due to its high costs. Scalp cooling is only available in eight of Ireland’s 86 hospitals. While Vicky was lucky to access a machine while undergoing treatment, Olivia noticed many could not.
“She was in a room of 30 people and she was the only one who would get it.
“They can only offer it to max two people at once, and they only have one machine due to the high cost. It's expensive for a clinic, and it's also incredibly time demanding for a nurse to have to implement on top of everything else."
With the scalp cooling treatment, her mother kept the majority of her hair. “You wouldn’t have known if you didn’t know her.”
Olivia's winning 'Athena' is 5% of the price of existing technology, and can be used outside hospital, reducing the time patients spend on wards. Patients can start and end the process themselves wherever they wish, including from their own home.
At full power, it can run for three-and-a-half hours, allowing patients to commute to and from the hospital, and move around during infusion, such as for bathroom visits.
Olivia said:
"It was about how can I make things easier in any way, shape or form for the day-to-day quality of life for a patient. It was looking at that hair loss treatment and thinking how can that be streamlined, and made more efficient and how can it be given to more patients in a room full of 30.”
James Dyson, Founder of Dyson, said hair loss is a particularly depressing and debilitating part of chemotherapy treatment. "You can freeze your scalp which you have to do in special facilities, but these aren't always available, are costly and it’s very painful."
Athena tackles this problem by being a "low-cost alternative available to everybody, with the potential to make a real difference," he added.
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