Google has announced that it is working on a cutting-edge model of artificial intelligence and machine learning that can identify and highlight medicines in handwritten prescriptions.
New Delhi,UPDATED: 21 December 2022 15:42 IST
Author: Jasmine Anand:
If you’ve ever visited the doctor and happened to get a handwritten prescription, it seems that squinting won’t help make the letters clear. In fact, doctors are notorious for their bad handwriting.
However, Google will now make the difficult task of decoding doctor’s handwriting simple and easy. The tech company is working on an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) model that can identify and translate hard-to-read handwritten recipes.
At the Google in India event in Delhi, the search giant announced it was working with pharmacists to find ways to decode confusing handwritten medical notes.
Manish Gupta, director (research), Google India, said, “Recipes are handwritten, difficult to read and difficult to remember.” Pharmacists are magicians. It is a complex process. We have invented AI capabilities to take care of recipes.’
When will this feature roll out?
The feature, which is currently a research prototype and not yet available to the general public, was showcased at the event. From the demo, it looks like users can take a photo of their recipe or upload a photo to the processing tool. Medicines in the note will be highlighted.
It should be noted that the tool, which has no planned launch date, is part of Google Lens, a Google AI tool used to translate languages and recognize different objects, available in the search bar of the Google app.
Here, it must be mentioned that India is a key market for Google, which has gathered more than half a billion users in the country. If the aforementioned AI model proves successful, there is a chance that the technology will be implemented in other markets where handwritten recipes are popular.
“I would imagine that anything we develop here will be applicable not only to India but also to many parts of the world. A lot of work is driven by India first, but not only India. There are projects that, if worked on in India, can be taken to many other places,” mentioned Gupta.