TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Professor Chen Yu-chun (陳育群) of National Yang Ming University developed an image recognition device for medical drugs to help people avoid taking the wrong medication.

Professor Chen is a general physician at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. He said that he has seen patients suffer from taking the wrong medicine, as some pills and capsules look very similar and are hard to tell apart, especially for the elderly.

Development of the image recognition system and device took about three years. The team has also created an app called AIGIA (愛家), which is integrated with the system.

Users, patients and doctors alike, can use the camera on their mobile phones to recognize what the medicine is. All they have to do is connect the device to their phones, put the drug into the device, and turn on the app.

Upon recognition, information such as the active ingredient, application, and warnings about the drug will be displayed. The system incorporates about 18,000 drugs and supports multiple language settings, including Chinese, English, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Malay.