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. 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 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. More than a decade later, and Lim is the chief executive officer of Nousq, a medical solutions company that has developed Clikx, the world’s first handheld robotic device for ear tube surgery that can be used without microscopes or general anaesthesia.
Doctors can insert the device into the ear canal and its proximity indicator will show how far it is away from the ear drum. Then, with the click of a blue button, Clikx can perform the surgery needed. “It’s quite amazing because in that one second, the whole technology works.
[It takes] away seven instruments. I do not even need the surgical microscope,” Lim says. It is a condition people around the.
