Women Engineers Duo Develops Breast Cancer Self-Checking Tool, Wins UK Dyson Award 2022

Indian student Shefali Bohra along with her co-designer Debra Babalola, Innovative Design Engineering graduates at Imperial College London and at the Royal College of Art, have developed a self-checking device for bread cancer. The duo went on to win the James Dyson Award 2022.

Established by the British inventor and billionaire of the same name, one of the richest persons in Britain, the James Dyson Award is an annual international design award open to college students or recent graduates. It is an international student design competition that offers a cash prize to push young students to design a problem-solving tool. Students who are eligible to enter the competition include students majoring in product design, industrial design, or engineering at the university level (or recent graduates).

Dotplot- The Breast Cancer Self-Checking Device

Bohra and Babalola together have created the tool called Dotplot, an at-home breast health monitoring device that offers accurate guided self-checks for breast health on a monthly basis. It is designed to facilitate the early detection of breast cancer by enabling and encouraging women to stick to a regular breast-self check routine.

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How Dotplot Works?

To use Dotplot, users have to go through a one-time onboarding on the app which includes entering the details of their period cycle, if they have one, to offer the correct date for their self-check. Following which, a personalised map of their torso is built by providing their bra size, breast shape and sliding the handheld device to rescale the baseline model. Once set up, the app guides women through the self-check by showing which areas they need to scan. The device uses a sound signal of a known frequency which is emitted to record the tissue composition at the site. The device checks each month's reading and compares it with the previously recorded readings to highlight any abnormalities developing in the tissue.

Inspiration To Design Dotplot

One of the duo’s co-founders who is a female athlete discovered an unusual knot in one of her breasts following a gym workout. When she visited a gynaecologist for a clinical breast exam, she was advised to monitor the knot using her own fingers for a few months. Gradually, the knot self-resolved. This event was a starting point where the duo sought to discover existing tools that routinely assist women in monitoring their breasts. They decided to build a device after they realised the lack of at-home solutions for the early detection of breast cancer.

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Besides the James Dyson Award 2022, Dotplot has also won the Venture Catalyst Challenge, Imperial College’s largest entrepreneurial competition and was also awarded the Helen Hamlyn Design Award for Digital Inclusion, sponsored by TATA Consultancy Services. It recently got accepted onto the MedTech Super Connector cohort (2022-23) as well.