DIA Scanner
Location
United States
Full Invention Name:
Drug Interaction Alerting Scanner
Team Name:
Lego Lambs
Team Number:
39
Team Description:
We are a veteran homeschool team in western New York. We have 8 team members (2 girls and 6 boys), 4 of whom will age out of FLL this year. We have won the Champions trophy in 2 of the last 3 years and were a Core Values ambassador team to the FLL World Festival in 2011. Our team has learned that by listening to one another and working together we can accomplish almost anything. Over the years we have learned about cost-benefit analyses, brain-storming, problem solving and poke-yoke. Our team has changed over the years but our desire to make a difference in our world has not. Over the years we have enjoyed putting together robots and attachments, as well as uncovering problems and discovering solutions through team work. We think that this year was our best year yet at finding a solution to a global problem: food and drug interactions of the elderly.
Category:
Independent
Brief Submission Description:
Food and drug interactions are a serious medical problem. According to the FDA, about 65% of people over age 60 in the US, about 37 million seniors, are on 3 or more prescription medications. Our senior partners said that avoiding food interactions with their medications was challenging and not even as easy as reading an ingredients list because some medicines interact negatively with vitamins, minerals, and chemicals not typically listed on a label. As a result, many seniors are at risk when buying food. Our solution is a scanner system, like a gift registry scanner, that a senior can use in a store while they shop. The scanner is securely loaded with their medical information. As they shop, they scan the barcode of a food they want to buy. The scanner then compares the data on the food such as ingredients, chemicals, and other important information with the interaction data on their meds. The senior is then warned when a food that they scanned contains a potential interaction.
