Ece Turhal.
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BERKELEY, Calif.—Ece Turhal, a third-year optometry student at the UC Berkeley School of Optometry was named the school’s 2017 Student Innovator Award winner. The student innovator award is a competition designed to reward creative, innovative and feasible ideas in the areas of clinical eyecare, research and practice management, among others.

Turhal’s proposal titled “Meet Dot,” is a system for frame identification and information, inventory and stock control, as well as theft management. Dot is a revamped frame tagging system that brings sleek design to current tags, which are cumbersome while trying on glasses and only serve to identify the frame for the inventory system.

The system also gets rid of the bulky tags, replacing them with unobtrusive coded dots that change color over predetermined time intervals, helping the optician with board management and purchasing. The dots hide a Radio-frequency identification (RFID) security device that can be installed easily and inexpensively. Lastly, Dot has an interactive component that allows patients to scan frames on a stationary tablet and see what other colors and sizes are available.

The award is sponsored by VSP through Jobson’s Rick Bay Foundation for Excellence in Eyecare Education—named after the former publisher and president of the Review of Optometry and Review of Ophthalmology, Jobson Medical Information, Rick Bay. The Berkeley Student Innovator Award is a $5,000 scholarship.

Other winners of the Student Innovator Award are Kathleen Hoang from SUNY College of Optometry who is sponsored by Essilor and VSP and Alex Martin from the New England College of Optometry who is sponsored by VisionWeb. Both presented their ideas, track DM and Lengua Lista Medical Translator, at the 2017 Vision Monday Global Leadership Summit.

Other participating schools—Salus University’s Pennsylvania College of Optometry, sponsored by MyEyeDr. and Marshall B. Ketchum University’s Southern California College of Optometry, sponsored by Luxottica—will announce their winners soon.