Dr Aoife McDonald-Bowyer - University College London

The challenge

Cervical cancer disproportionately affects women and people with cervixes in low- and middle-income countries, where screening coverage remains far lower and mortality far higher than in high-income settings. Even where screening programmes exist, uptake is limited in part by the examination itself: the speculum can be uncomfortable, requires an intimate and vulnerable position, and its use depends on trained healthcare workers, which limits how widely screening and colposcopy can be delivered. The opportunity for change is to design a more comfortable, less invasive approach to these examinations that maintains standardised sampling and imaging – one that could widen access to screening and colposcopy while continuing to support the healthcare workers who provide it. 

The research

Soft robotics has been explored in other areas of medicine, such as colonoscopy and endoscopy, but has not yet been applied within the female reproductive system, despite the fact that soft, compliant materials could directly address some of the major barriers to pelvic examination. Dr Aoife McDonald-Bowyer is developing a soft robotic device that could replace the speculum for cervical screening and imaging, investigating what such a device would look and feel like, how it would be operated, and how it could find its way to the cervix. She aims to show this approach is technically and clinically viable, laying the groundwork for a new generation of gynaecological devices. 

The researcher

Dr McDonald-Bowyer is a Research Fellow in UCL's Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering and the UCL Hawkes Institute, with a focus on soft robotics and medical devices. Her doctoral research developed soft robotic instruments for robotic-assisted surgery and semi-autonomous intraoperative ultrasound guidance. As a postdoctoral research fellow, she invented SoftCerv, a soft robotic device for speculum-free access to the cervix, with AI-based control to reduce dependence on specialist operators and therefore widen access to healthcare. Throughout her research, people affected by the cervical screening process have helped shape her work and this is a core part of her methodology. She is motivated by developing new technology for women's health, a field that has historically been underresearched and underprioritised, particularly for underrepresented and underserved groups.