Search Engine company Google in a bid to help patients decode Doctors’ incomprehensible handwritten prescriptions, is set to launch an AI feature that can help decrypt it.
The tech giant which hosted a conference in India on Monday has partnered with several pharmacists and hospitals in the country to help achieve this idea.
The feature will be rolled out on Google lens, which will allow users to take a picture of the prescription note. Once the picture is taken, it will be processed by the AI-driven lens, which will then decode whatever is written on the note.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
During the conference, the Director of research at Google Dr. Mannish Gupta gave a brief demonstration of how the technology works, where it correctly decoded a doctor’s handwritten prescription.
According to reports, the Google Lens feature can recognize 15 billion things, up from one billion in 2018.
Also, users who want to learn a new language can use Google Lens, which can translate more than 100 languages, such as Spanish, and Arabic, amongst other languages.
Google disclosed that India has the highest number of Google lens users in the world, as India has remained a key market for the tech giant.
As of November 2022, Google had a clear monopoly on the mobile search engine market across India with a share of 99.74 percent, providing a clear picture of Google’s rise to becoming the biggest search engine operator within the South Asian market.
In 2021, Google.com was among the most visited websites in India. The search engine company however did not disclose the release date for its proposed AI lens feature.
In 2017, the search engine company rolled out its visual search tool “Google Lens”, and has since upgraded the app with new features that can recognize images better and help users with improved contexts related to the picture.
Apart from the smartphone app, Google has also integrated Lens on Chrome for users to access the tool on desktops as well.
With its latest move to introduce an AI feature that can decode Doctors’ prescriptions, it will no doubt bring a sigh of relief to patients who have for a very long time been faced with the difficulty of decoding it.
Google wants to make squinting at your doctor’s questionable penmanship a thing of the past. A feature being developed for Google Lens will use “assistive technology” to detect medications mentioned in prescriptions, TechCrunch reports. Pharmacists are working with the tech giant on the feature, announced Monday at the annual Google for India conference, but no release date has been set. Google noted that the technology would help, not replace, medical staff. “No decision will be made solely based on the output provided by this technology,” it said in a statement. (LinkedIn News)