Open Call for Innovative Defense-Related Dual-Purpose Technologies

Current packaging of prescription eyedrops produces oversized eyedrops that are up to five times the capacity of the human eye, resulting in medication overdosing, serious systemic side effects, and ultimately decreasing treatment adherence. Medication non-adherence promotes poor health outcomes in Airmen. The Nanodropper is a universal adaptor for prescription eyedrop medication bottles that creates smaller and more efficacious droplets to reduce adverse side effects associated with oversized eyedrops to improve patient treatment adherence and health outcomes. Through our Phase I customer discovery efforts we learned that the Air Force has a national defense-related mission need in the area of health and vision preservation. Specifically, there is a need to ensure vision readiness for the AF’s active component service members via improved eyedrop treatment adherence through the reduction of negative health outcomes associated with eyedrop use. To meet our AF stakeholder’s needs, our Phase II objectives are as follows: 1) increase the range of compatible bottles through adaptor modification and development, 2) automate production in order to fulfill high-volume government contracts, and 3) conduct a usability study with an AF patient population comprised of prescription eyedrop users in order to evaluate the quantitative and qualitative health and economic impacts of the Nanodropper on this AF patient population.