Winning invention scans pills

PORTLAND – A team of four computer science students from Portland State University won the Cornell Cup USA, a national competition for computer-aided inventions.

The project they displayed earlier this month at Walt Disney World can be used to identify pills. It scans a pill, then searches a database of 18,000 pills for a match. The answer pops up in less than 14 seconds. The invention could be used by doctors or others who need to identify a pill in an emergency.

The Oregonian reported the winning team is made up of four Intel scholarship winners from Vietnam.