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Twenty-six-year-old Yu Kelu was diagnosed with Glaucoma in late 2019.
Her 55-year-old father suffers from constant eye pain and headaches, as he has to go to the doctor to apply eye pressure and the pain usually lasts for days.
Pandemics also make it difficult to visit hospitals frequently, suffering from viruses, in addition to the uncomfortable treatment process. That made Kelu want to do something.
Kelu is a PhD student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
During school, he roped two other students: 26-year-old David Lee and 28-year-old Li Si. It was a melting pot of ideas, as all three came from different educational backgrounds, and each used their own expertise to come up with a solution.
Si is a PhD student at the school’s Institute for Health Innovation and Technology, while David is a research engineer in the school’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
The three young inventors combined their knowledge of materials, electronics and machine learning to build a sensor device to monitor their eyes to detect glaucoma, which they believe can help people with these conditions improve their lives.
They decided to call it HOPES, a ring to symbolize a dream in their name, to help the elderly not be blind.
The concept worked, and today (November 17) it was announced that it was the first international winner of the James Dyson Award in Singapore, winning a grand prize of S $ 53,000 to carry out the invention.
These Singapore winners – Singapore’s first team in all 17 years of award history – won more than 2,000 entries in the world to win the grand prize, and were personally selected by Sir James Dyson himself.
What is Glaucoma
Glaucoma is a prevalent disease among middle-aged and elderly people, and is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide.
Last year, about 80 million people in the world were diagnosed with Glaucoma.
In Singapore, about 3% of people over the age of 50 have this condition. Almost one in 10 people over the age of 70 has Glaucoma.
Because it is mostly asymptomatic, it is also known as the “silent thief of sight”. There is no cure, but if diagnosed and treated early, blindness can be prevented.
“Many who suffer from it are aware of the effects of increased eye pressure and may not notice any problems before they lose their sight,” they said in an interview with Kelu, David and Si Vulcan Post.
“Therefore, regular monitoring of eye pressure is necessary to prevent and diagnose Glaucoma. Regular monitoring of eye pressure can help slow or prevent vision loss, especially if the disease is detected in the early stages,” they said.
Current methods of eye pressure inspection require patients to visit the hospital every two to three hours within 24 hours to monitor for eye pressure fluctuations.
Sometimes hospitalization is necessary, which disrupts patients ’daily lives.
“Due to the inconvenience, many patients do not meet the check-up schedule. That’s why we saw the need to control the pressure inside the eye at home to manage Glaucoma, ”the team said.
Generation of expectations
Last year, Dr. Kelu and Dr. Victor Koh met with a clinical ophthalmologist at the National University Hospital (NUH) to learn more about the problems of glaucoma treatment and diagnosis.
Kelu and Si decided to design a portable device that could take advantage of their knowledge and specialization in electronic skin (e-skin) and sensor technology developed by the Tee Research Group to measure eye pressure. Later, David joined the team to help with the work.
Over the past 18 months, the team has spent most of its waking hours designing, developing and prototyping HOPES. They hoped to fill a gap they had identified in glaucoma management: the need for a safe, non-invasive, and inexpensive home eye pressure sensor.
This device can be implemented with a telemedicine platform, reducing hospital visits and the burden on health infrastructure, especially in times of pandemic.
HOPES can also use the data collected by clinicians to adjust treatment plans. The team aims to respond to many HOPES users through a portable and accessible user experience.
After nearly a hundred iterations of the product, HOPES was born: a painless, low-cost, portable biomedical device for in-house intraocular pressure (IOP) testing. Driven by patent-pending sensor technology and artificial intelligence (AI), it is a convenient device for users, especially those suffering from Glaucoma, to monitor their IOP.
Earlier this year, Dr. Benjamin Tee shared a newsletter about the James Dyson Award for Student Leadership.
The team realized that the work they were doing was in line with the purpose of the award: To design an engineering solution to a problem.
Driven by the alignment of the approach, and with the hope that their products could make a difference and be recognized as much as possible, the young researchers decided to submit for the HOPES award.
To their delight, they won 2,000 participants to emerge as the main winners of this international award, validating their research and showing that it has the potential to solve real-world problems.
How does the device work?
After creating a profile in the product application, the user wears a HOPES glove while placing the sensor at their fingertips, pressing it against the center of the eyelid.
The fingertip uses a unique sensor architecture that captures information about the dynamic pressure of the user’s eye with accuracy below milliseconds.
Captured signals are processed by machine learning algorithms to accurately and accurately calculate user eye pressure tests.
The data is transmitted via Bluetooth to paired devices or uploaded to the Cloud for remote access by clinicians.
The app provides users with easy-to-read measurement history and direct links to health systems, allowing them to seek medical help to minimize future symptoms.
Beyond a simple and easy-to-use application, HOPES has AI technology.
The team explained why AI is necessary for the product: “When discussing the problem of glaucoma treatment with clinicians and conducting our trials, we noticed that it is more difficult to measure eye pressure when the patient has previously had some eye injuries, such as scars or lesions.”
“This, in addition to differences in patient eyelid texture, added additional complexity to our approach to measuring patient eye pressure. That’s why we decided to implement AI to help solve the patient’s eye pressure measurement problem, considering variations in different patient conditions,” they said.
What’s next for HOPES
After learning that HOPES had received the James Dyson Award, some local and foreign companies and businesses approached the group who wanted to know more about their invention.
“It was a nice surprise and this offers some exciting opportunities. We are open to discussing how to take HOPES further and make it a reality, ”the team said.
Students also plan to collaborate with NUH clinics to collect and analyze patient eye pressure data to train the device’s automatic learning mode.
They are currently optimizing HOPES ’performance, improving its design and working with local hospitals in Singapore to pilot HOPES soon.
About winning the James Dyson International Award, the team said: “With this win, we hope to measure people’s eye pressure in the future, in a painless and at home environment. We want to improve people’s quality of life and one day monitor the health of our research team’s sensor technology. we want to apply it to different applications, such as robotics and biomedical devices. “
Commenting on the victory in Singapore, Sir James Dyson, Dyson’s founder and chief engineer, said: “I have known firsthand how invasive and unpleasant glaucoma tests can be, but it is an essential test.”
“This group of young people has faced a problem that does not directly affect them, but that affects family members. Their work has the potential to make glaucoma testing much more accessible and I wish them every success as they navigate the difficult process of medical development and admissions, ”James said.
The James Dyson Award is managed and managed by the James Dyson Foundation, an international charity that aims to nurture and inspire a new generation of design engineers and inventors.
Because Dyson’s business is not involved in the administration of the James Dyson Award and is not involved in recruitment, research, or the development of student inventions, Dyson said in response to inquiries.
“Participants retain absolute ownership of any intellectual property related to their ideas. The biggest support for the award is in sharing external contacts that can help with media exposure and marketing, ”he added.
Featured Image Credit: James Dyson Award, NUS
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