Google is working to overcome bad handwriting by using technology to help read doctors’ prescriptions.
Key Details
- Google announced at its annual conference in India that the company is working with pharmacists to make a product to help decipher doctors’ bad handwriting.
- The product will take a picture of a prescription order and scan it to pick out medicines mentioned in the note.
- The product is still in the testing phase and is unavailable to the public, without saying if or when it will be.
Why it’s news
It is commonly known that doctors have bad handwriting—mainly from writing notes in a hurry—but Google is trying to fix that.
Google is working with pharmacists to create technology that can decipher doctors’ handwriting quickly and efficiently to fill prescriptions faster.
The product will be made for Google Lens and will take a picture of prescription orders and pick out medicine names mentioned in the order so pharmacists can read the notes faster.
This technology will allow workers not to spend time having to closely read notes to understand doctors’ scribbles and quickly know what medicines the patients need. This technology will be great, but it will never replace humans as healthcare is sensitive and no mistakes can be made.
“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,” says Google.
