An Irish woman has created the world's first fully inclusive, multisensory pregnancy test for visually impaired and blind women - and she's only at the start of her career.
University of Limerick (UL) graduate Leah Shanahan, from Tralee is the creator of AMY, the world's first fully accessible, multisensory pregnancy test.
She joined Oliver Callan on RTÉ Radio 1 to share the story of how her invention came to be.
She explained that she was studying Product Design and Technology in UL and the final year product challenged students to find a problem area in design and create a solution.
The 23-year-old was drawn to femtech and women's healthcare, which led her to her topic.
Shanahan herself is blind in one eye, a condition she was born with, which "inspired the project", she said.
"I'm not blind myself but I do have a half-understanding of it, and then when I got to speak to the blind women and understand about their lives, that's really what spurred on the project then."
"It delivers the results in three different ways: you can feel the results through a tactile plus or minus and also you can connect it to your phone so you can hear the results, or you can see a big colour like red or green on the screen", she explained. "So it's a way for blind women to be able to access pregnancy test results without needing to involve a third person."
The test is a saliva-based pregnancy test, a lesser known method that has been around for years and that Shanahan herself was unaware of before she began her project. It's much more accessible for blind people, compared to a urine test, she added.
Creating three ways to confirm the test results was a high priority for the graduate, so that there was an abundance of clarity. It also gives a moment of privacy for these women that they didn't previously have.
"All sighted women get to be the first person to find out that they're pregnant whereas for blind women, that's not true. They have to involve someone else", Shanahan said.
"It's such a huge moment in any woman's life and they're specifically excluded from that experience."
For now, Shanahan said she would be open to collaborating with manufacturers to get the project out to the public.
To listen to the full interview, click the link above.
