Pilldentity

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  Logo

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  Before Identification

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  After Identification

Inspiration

I was inspired to design this application because my grandmother has a hard time identifying pills. Although she didn’t use to struggle with her vision, it is harder for her to tell which of her medications are wich as she ages. I wanted to make this app to make it easier for the visually impaired to distinguish medication primarily, but it serves a dual purpose of easily identifying any unknown medication that might be found so that it may be handled safely.

What it does

This app uses a photo to match a pill by shape, color, and imprint to a database and thereby identify it.

How I built it

Pills have three unique identifiers. The first is their color, the second is their shape, and the third is their imprint. Knowing this, I created a React.js web app which lets the user take an image of the pill. The image is sent through Google Cloud Platform’s image analysis to retrieve the shape and the color. The imprint is retrieved through an OCR. This information is sent to the Python Flask server which is then transferred onto the web app to be displayed back to the user.

Challenges I ran into

The shape and color were easy to do. However, getting the imprint was difficult because it was not plain black text with a white background. It was instead an indent in the pill itself which was difficult for the OCR to recognize.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I learned a lot about pills and I made a semi functional prototype of the idea.

What I learned

Pills have three identifiers: color, shape, imprint.

What's next for Pilldentity

I’m going to add more functionality to the application and maybe release a mobile app instead of a simple web-app. The application can even assist pharmacists in the process of counting and separating pills.

Built With

• css
• flask
• google-cloud
• html
• python
• react.js