The United States Patent & Trademark Office granted has granted University of South Florida alumna Anna Hopen - who as a child was the big thinker behind the USF Young Innovator Competition and is now an emergency room nurse - with U.S. Patent No. 10,825,559 today for her prescription compliance invention.
Hopen's invention - entitled Interiorly Positioned Machine-Readable Data Labels for Prescription Compliance - employs a QR code on the inside of a prescription bottle cap. Smartphone software scans the code to ensure patients take their medication at the correct dosage schedule. "The code cannot be scanned without opening the bottle, so we know they have access to the medication," Hopen said.
Hopen, 21, has additional patents pending and software in development to integrate with existing prescription systems. “It has to be inexpensive, easy to use and effective” said Hopen, who plans to incorporate her inventions in a startup venture.
Hopen graduated from the University of South Florida’s College of Nursing summa cum laude earlier in 2020 and now works at the Lakeland Regional Medical Center as an ER nurse.
At the age of nine, she helped found the USF Young Innovation Competition which conducted annual competitions for 10 years with the support of USF, the National Academy of Inventors and Museum of Science and Industry. Thousands of inventions were submitted and children from first grade through high school pitched their inventions live before judges including USF Senior Vice President for Research, Innovation & Knowledge Enterprise Paul Sanberg, ABC Shark Tank judge Kevin Harrington and HSN on-air host Bill Green. Winners of the competition went on to commercialize their inventions and even appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
