The invention, aptly named Hopes (Home Eye Pressure E-skin Sensor), is a glove that uses sensor technology and artificial intelligence to enable patients to check their eye pressure at home through sensors at their fingertips when they put their hands on their eyelids.

Data can be transmitted via Bluetooth to paired devices or uploaded to computer cloud storage for remote access by clinicians.

The award, given out yearly by famous British engineer and inventor James Dyson since 2005, comes with £30,000 (S$54,700) prize money and worldwide recognition. This is the first time a Singapore team has bagged the top global prize.

The three postgraduate students – Ms Yu Kelu, 26, and Mr Li Si, 28, both doctoral students from NUS materials science and engineering department, and Mr David Lee, 26, a research assistant from the NUS electrical and computer engineering department.

Yu Kelu said she went to work on this invention after seeing the pain of her 55-year-old father – a patient with glaucoma. The process of testing and checking for glaucoma meant that he was hospitalized overnight and was very painful, so she wanted to create a device that could check for the disease without causing pain.