Irish graduate Ella Flanagan reaches James Dyson Award global Top 20 with Noli wristband

Ella Flanagan, a Technological University Dublin graduate, has reached the James Dyson Award 2026 global Top 20 with Noli, a proposed emergency wristband for mental health nurses, RTÉ reported on 13 October in Ireland. The shortlist gives the prototype a place in the award’s final judging stage as Flanagan continues its development.

Noli had already been named Ireland’s national winning entry. In September, the award organiser said national winners and runners-up would compete for places in the international Top 20. Flanagan’s new placement marks that next stage of the competition; the published accounts describe a prototype rather than a device in service.

How the Noli emergency wristband is designed to work

The project’s award entry says a wearer activates Noli by pulling and holding its strap for three seconds. The proposed system then alerts the three nearest staff members. It is designed to call colleagues close to the wearer, addressing concerns raised in nurse interviews about responses to alarms sent across an entire building.

The entry describes wristbands, fixed nodes and a master node in a Bluetooth Low Energy hybrid mesh. Fixed nodes relay alerts, while the master node uses signal strength to estimate which staff are closest. That describes the intended alert route, but the published material does not establish how reliably it would work in a healthcare setting.

Flanagan says family members working in mental health nursing influenced the project. Her account says the concept shifted towards mental health settings after she considered accounts of assaults and delayed assistance. The entry describes development work involving CAD, silicone moulding and electronics, and says she replicated the proximity logic using ESP-NOW to demonstrate feasibility.

What Irish research says about violence against mental health staff

A 2022 European Psychiatry conference abstract offers context for the workplace problem the device aims to address. Drawing on State Claims Agency figures, its authors reported 6,690 episodes of violence against Mental Health Division staff across 2018 and 2019. That is a historical two-year figure, not a count of recent incidents or a measure of Noli’s potential effect.

The authors also surveyed staff through acute psychiatric units. Among respondents, 92.4% reported verbal abuse and 30.3% reported physical assault over a 24-month period. Those percentages describe the survey respondents; the abstract does not establish that they apply to every mental health worker in Ireland. It also reported gaps in incident reporting and follow-up.

The abstract called for improvements in prevention and in the reporting and investigation of incidents. Its findings help explain why staff might need a way to request assistance promptly. They do not test Noli or show that a wearable alert reduces violence. The study predates the current award shortlist and serves as context for the problem, not an assessment of Flanagan’s invention.

What the James Dyson Award Top 20 place means for Noli

RTÉ reports that inventor James Dyson will review the Top 20 in the final judging stage, with a global winner due to be announced on 4 November. RTÉ gives the winner’s prize as €35,000. The organiser’s September announcement described £30,000 for global winners to support invention development. The published figures use different currencies; neither account explains the difference.

The project entry says Noli is in the patent application process and that Flanagan has contacted healthcare innovators and Enterprise Ireland. RTÉ says she will continue developing and testing the device with health innovators. These are reported development steps. Neither account identifies a deployment site, a clinical or operational trial, independent technical validation, safety certification or measured outcomes in healthcare use.

The shortlist recognises a proposed response to a documented workplace concern. Whether Noli can consistently identify the nearest colleagues, deliver an alert when needed and fit into working care environments remains unestablished by the published accounts. Its competition progress and its effectiveness as a safety device are separate questions.