Pharma label translation tool wins prize

Health24 is a set of products to translate medical labels and information. It includes: a list of popular medicines sorted by common symptoms, translatable into any language; a searchable database of medicines that lists interactions; and a translation tool that works from photos of medicine instructions.

Made by six computer programmers from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), Health24 claimed the grand prize at the Americas Datafest hackathon event in Auburn, Alabama in early November.

The team earned 1,000 USD as a prize from Alabama Media Group, as well as the opportunity to compete for a global Datafest prize.

Datafest events focus on immigration to North America and Europe, and human flows between and within countries in Latin America, as well as on general population shifts within the US and Canada.

The aim is to use computer programing and code to build web applications, mobile apps, tools and resources to help migrants manage their daily lives, as well as giving experts he opportunity to examine existing patterns and emerging trends in migration, NGOs to provide services and other activities related to migration.

Health24 is tailored for migrants, and is available as a web-based tool, and for the iOS and Android mobile operating platforms.

The Health24 team determined the functional pieces for a typical use case, with a user unwell and needing to determine which medicines to take. For that they use the symptom checker.

After finding out which medicines to take, the user would want to view the information about the drug in their native language to see how to take, what not to mix it with and so on.

After they know info about the drug to take, they would go to buy the medicine. They can then take pictures of the medicine information and have the image converted to text and translated to their native language.