prescription

Doctors are well known for scribbling hasty prescriptions that are near indecipherable for the average person. However, Google’s working on a solution that could allow Google Lens to detect the medicines listed in a prescription.

Google showed off the feature at its annual conference in India on December 19th (via TechCrunch), saying that it was working with pharmacists to decipher the handwriting of doctors. Once the feature rolls out to Google Lens, users will be able to either take a picture of a doctor’s note or upload one from their photo library. After processing the image, the app will detect and highlight medicines mentioned in the note.

However, Google hasn’t shared details about when the feature will launch, saying only that “much work still remains to be done before this system is ready for the real world.”

Moreover, Google Lens already offers some features for transcribing written notes. However, as noted by The Verge, how well the feature works depends on how legible the handwriting is. Given doctors’ notoriously illegible handwriting, it’ll be interesting to see how well the Lens feature will work, if at all.

Source: TechCrunch, The Verge

Children could be at risk of incorrect dosing due to a lack of information available to doctors in the country, according to an editorial published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Doctors in Canada, Australia and Japan do not have access to the same level of pediatric research and drug information as their colleagues in the U.S. and Europe.

"Children are not little adults," said the authors. "Pediatric labeling should go well beyond simply adjusting adult doses to a pediatric weight, because this is inappropriate and potentially dangerous."

As an example, they mention the increased suicide risk from early off-label prescribing of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors guided only by data in adults.

While drug companies claim there is not enough money in the pediatric market to make drug trials worthwhile, American and European governments provide financial incentives to encourage testing in children, and the U.S. Pediatric Research Equity Act requires drug companies to tests drugs and submit results.

"In line with recommendations of the World Health Organization, we need international harmonization of laws to ensure that appropriate incentives are in place to promote pediatric research necessary for pediatric indications and prescribing information," the authors concluded, calling upon Canadian policymakers to pass laws similar to those in the U.S.