An Irishwoman who won the James Dyson Award for creating a portable scalp cooling device for cancer patients on chemotherapy says the award is “incredibly fulfilling” after an emotional development journey.

University of Limerick (UL) graduate Olivia Humphreys scooped the award for her invention ‘Athena’ which is a thermoelectric scalp-cooling device for people undergoing chemotherapy.

Scalp cooling can help prevent patients’ hair loss by shrinking the blood vessels in the scalp and reducing the damage caused to hair follicle cells.

Olivia Humphreys with her mother Vicky. Image: James Dyson Awards

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Olivia said she was inspired to create the device while watching her own mother go through treatment.

“I spent a lot of time with my mum during her infusions on the ward in UHL when she was undergoing treatment and from there, I was able to see a lot of the operational difficulties and logistical things that happened with scalp cooling treatment – a treatment that she availed of alongside her infusion treatment due to the fear of hair loss going through chemotherapy,” said Olivia.

“From there, I was able to gather a few inputs into potentially what could be improved.

“I've been working on this project throughout my final year of college and they ask us to solve a problem, so it was a matter of reaching out to numerous people that have also undergone chemotherapy treatment and gathering all of those inputs to try and make something like what Athena is today – which is the patient-managed portable scalp cooling device that you see now.”

Olivia Humphreys with her Athena device. Image: James Dyson Awards

She said working with her mother and other cancer patients was an emotional experience.

“It's been such a lovely opportunity for us to bond,” she said. “It's been emotional.

“At the start, when we were talking to patients about their personal experiences, that fuelled the fire and to be able to be at this point and to have won the award is incredibly fulfilling.

“It's a full circle moment that, you know, shows that all those difficult conversations have been worth it really, which has been great.”

Olivia Humphreys. Image: James Dyson Awards

Olivia said Athena is essentially a portable mini cooler for your head.

“The cooler is cycling water through tubing up around a headpiece and that cooling of the scalp causes a mechanism called vasoconstriction, which is the tightening of the blood vessels to the scalp,” she said.

“When you're being infused with chemotherapy, it cycles around your body and [Athena] is all about minimizing blood flow to the scalp, therefore minimizing the amount of chemotherapy drugs that can get to the hair follicles in our heads that can damage the hair follicle cells, which causes it to fall out.

“So it's just tightening of the blood cells to minimize the chemotherapy that gets to the scalp that can damage it.”

The portable nature of the device enables patients to bring it home and control their therapy themselves – making it more accessible to the consumer market.

The device will likely cost around €1,000 – a fraction of the €40,000 charge for industry machines.