There's been a rise in patients with eczema problems after the "circuit breaker". You might want to bring your own liquid soap and hand moisturiser, and speak to the doctor for help
If you suffer from eczema, or what many doctors term as “atopic dermatitis”, you’d already steer clear of products that dry your skin as they exacerbate your condition.
But with the current pandemic comes the more frequent use of hand sanitisers and hand washing – and this doesn’t bode well for you.
Mask wearing, another adopted COVID-19 norm, isn’t a pretty development for skin either. “Overall, there is an increase in the number of consultations related to eczema from mask wearing,” said Dr Eileen Tan, who is a dermatologist at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital’s Eileen Tan Skin Clinic & Associates.
Rollerball device to relieve eczema itch
Koh Bei Ning’s rollerball anti-itch device for eczema skin is becoming a reality with her Kickstarter and website launch. (Photo: Koh Bei Ning)
Imagine suffering from eczema and endless itchy skin. And then imagine you create a nifty rollerball device that relieves eczema itch – and it gets picked up by the James Dyson Award for a national innovators contest. Imagine you get so much interest that you crowdfund on Kickstarter to make your rollerball invention a reality. Koh Bei Ning doesn’t need to imagine. This was her dream and it’s becoming a reality.
Koh suffers from atopic dermatitis (its common name is eczema) and as part of her final-year thesis at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Division of Industrial Design (DID), she created a rollerball itch relief device that works as a gentle alternative to scratching. She submitted her design as an entry to the James Dyson Award, an international design innovation competition which highlights design engineers at the start of their careers. Her rollerball device became the Singapore runner-up.
Koh’s invention is a rollerball mechanism with a textured ball that rolls over the skin. It uses repetitive downward pressure on itchy skin to provide relief through the texture, while minimising force on the skin. For sufferers of eczema, this motion reduces tearing of already inflamed and irritated skin and avoids further irritation from fingernails when scratching. Doors opened for her after her invention won accolades, which enabled her to share how her eczema itch relief rollerball, now called Rollo, works. “I have been given many valuable opportunities such as participating in Prototypes for Humanity, an exhibition in Dubai which gathers 100 student innovations,” she said.
