Ear surgery in seconds with world-first handheld device thanks to entrepreneurial doctor

A Singaporean doctor has created a handheld device to fix a condition called glue ear and has won a Cartier Women’s Initiative award for it

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Singaporean doctor Lynne Lim demonstrates the world’s first handheld robotic device for ear tube surgery, which she developed with the National University of Singapore. It has won her a Cartier Women’s Initiative award. Photo: Cartier

Mabel Lui

Published: 4:15pm, 8 Jun 2024Updated: 8:42pm, 8 Jun 2024

Corrected [8:41pm, 8 Jun, 2024]

[8:41pm, 8 Jun, 2024]
Impact investment firm Sagana does not shortlist Cartier Women's Initiative fellows, as an earlier version of this story said.

For Singaporean doctor Lynne Lim, who placed first in the science and technology pioneer category of the 2024 Cartier Women’s Initiative awards, the path to becoming an impact entrepreneur began in 2009.

That year, Lim was on a humanitarian mission in Cambodia when she had to turn away hundreds of children who had travelled across mountains to see her.

Why were they there? They all had a condition called glue ear (also known as otitis media with effusion), in which fluid builds up in the middle part of the ear canal, and Lim lacked the equipment to perform the ear tube surgery they needed.

“I couldn’t help because I had no operating theatre, no surgical microscope, no general anaesthesia – because with seven instruments in the ear, the kid will move,” she explains.

“I was actually really distressed to have to turn them all away. I came back to Singapore, and I kept thinking about this.”

After seeing her daughter get her ears pierced with a piercing gun, Lim had an “aha” moment, and began working with an engineer at the National University of Singapore to develop a prototype for a handheld device that would provide a solution to glue ear.