It is a common perception that doctor prescriptions are perhaps the most difficult to read and understand since they are illegible. Apart from chemists and pharmacists, commoners struggle to decipher a doctor's handwriting on the prescription. Several memes have been posted online that make fun of doctors' handwriting. However, that is set to change as Google has come up with a solution that will help people decode and translate doctors' handwriting.
On Monday, Google announced an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) model that can identify and highlight medicines within difficult-to-read handwritten prescriptions, according to TechCrunch. The search giant made the announcement during its annual conference in India and mentioned that the technology will be assistive in nature and will help pharmacists to digitise handwritten medical documents.
How Will It Work?
The feature which will be rolled out on Google Lens will allow users to either take a picture of the prescription or upload one from the photo library. After the image gets processed, the app will detect and highlight the medicines mentioned in the note, a Google executive demonstrated during the conference.
Google Lens is an AI-powered multipurpose object recognition tool that can be used to detect objects and translate languages. While making the announcement, the company also noted that India had the highest number of Google Lens users in the world.
However, there's no detail yet on when the new text deciphering feature is expected to launch, only that “much work still remains to be done before this system is ready for the real world.” The feature is currently under development.
"This will act as an assistive technology for digitizing handwritten medical documents by augmenting the humans in the loop such as pharmacists, however, no decision will be made solely based on the output provided by this technology," the company said in a statement, as reported by TechCrunch.
A few weeks back, a doctor from Kerala left the internet surprised with his exceptionally tidy prescription. The prescription was written by Dr. Nithin Narayanan, who has been working at a Community Health Centre (CHC) in Palakkad's Nenmara for the last three years. The doctor actually wrote in clear block letters, which made the prescription extremely easy for anyone to read.
