Anti-counterfeit medicine app designed by Indian students wins Microsoft's Imagine Cup

• App developers from the Indian RV College of Engineering won the Big Data award at the 2018 Microsoft Imagine Cup for their DrugSafe app.
  
• DrugSafe using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to inform users about whether or not their medicine is fake.
  
• The process uses machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to compare the scanned medicine against the Azure Cosmos database.

In a country where the out of pocket expenditure on drugs is nearly 70% and where affordability levels are meek, an app like DrugSafe is an attractive solution against counterfeit drugs. In fact, the team that developed the application just won an award at the 2018 Microsoft Imagine Cup.

Developed by three students at the RV College of Engineering in India, the app won under the ‘Big Data’ category for using Azure Cosmos database for their drug validation system. Their app essentially takes a picture of the medicine that a patient has bought, runs it through its multi-layered drug validation system and delivers a score to inform users how safe a drug is to use.

Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) the app is able to analyse the design details of the packaging and then compare them to the original trademarked attributes on the database. The multi-layered validation system consists of four checks which are basically a batch check, a location check, a blueprint comparison and an authenticity determination.

Team DrugSafe does admit that there is a slight margin of error because the app uses machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), which why the app doesn’t outrightly say if a medicine packet is counterfeit. Instead, the app issues a score on the probability of the medicine being fake.

The app’s machine learning and AI features also aid in spotting if there’s a potential epidemic outbreak in a particular region. Integrated into the ‘community’ feature, the app sends out an alert, shows a map of the community, while also keeping users updated with the important broadcasts.

As per the figures put forward by the World Health Organisation (WHO), 20% of the drugs sold in India are fake. Especially the basic medication normally prescribed for cold, cough and headaches is either of low-quality or entirely fraudulent.

And though fake medicine is a global problem, it’s more prevalent in low-income nations where the percentage of counterfeit medication falls between 10-30%. In turn, counterfeit medication results in the increase of the economic and social burden. Fake, or even low-quality medicine, result in an endless cycle where patients don’t get better but still end up experiencing unwanted side effects which only means one thing - more medicines.