An Irish student who has invented a scalp-cooling device for chemo patients has been announced as the Irish winner of the James Dyson Award 2024.
University of Limerick graduate Olivia Humphreys is the brains behind Athena, a portable, thermoelectric battery-operated scalp-cooling device for people undergoing chemotherapy treatment.
Scalp-cooling can help prevent hair loss by shrinking the blood vessels with the application of cold temperatures to the scalp during chemotherapy treatment.
Athena has a carry case and a cooling helmet and aims to provide a more accessible, yet effective option for scalp-cooling, enabling people to spend less time in the hospital on a chemotherapy infusion day.
Humphreys’ mother had caner treatment in 2019 and she noticed the shortage of scalp-cooling machines in the hospital, as well as how limited the existing solutions were.
As a result, she created Athena, which works by using low-cost thermoelectric semiconductors to cool a tank of water that is then circulated around the head through a headpiece.
The battery-powered device allows patients to bring it home and control it themselves, making it more accessible to the consumer market.
Athena will now progress to the international stage of the James Dyson Award and Humphreys will aim to commercialise the product by producing a fully functional, technologically integrated prototype.
