Verify your Prescriptions with RealRx

Ideas and Presentation by The Shakes

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James Hathaway, Alex Malfregeot, Diana Lysova, Andrew Chen

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Our Mission

Peters, Nature.com, 2012

• Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are a serious danger to patients across the globe. Amphetamines and other adulterants can injure or kill a patient without warning.
• With RealRx we offer an accessible and high-tech solution to the problem of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, one to save countless lives; particularly in the developing world.

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Motivation - Economics, R&D

Mikulic, Statista.com, 2022

• With an increase in counterfeit pharmaceuticals, drug manufacturers continue to incur more monetary losses annually
• This results in fewer new, potentially breakthrough drugs being developed every year
• The roughly 200 billion dollar counterfeit market in 2020 resulted in an estimated 13 new drugs lost

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Motivation - Economics, R&D

Mikulic, Statista.com, 2022

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Motivation - Global Public Health

McKnight, USPharmacist.com, 2014

• 2014 WHO study on counterfeit manufacturing finds:
• 48.7% occurs in developing Asian countries
• 18.7% occurs in Africa
• 13.6% occurs in Europe
• 1% occurs in the USA

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Motivation - Global Public Health

McKnight, USPharmacist.com, 2014

• Therefore, patients takings pharmaceuticals across the globe, especially in the developing world, run an increased risk of consuming couterfeits.

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Example - Fake Anti-Malarial

K Karunamoorthi, Malaria Journal, 2014

• As of 2014, fake anti-malarials are estimated to cause well over half of all yearly deaths from malaria (450,000 / 660,000)
• The fakes also contain harmful adulterants in addition to being ineffective

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Tech Stack

• To accomplish our goal, we utilize the following tools:
• Python:
• PySimpleGUI, OpenPYXL, PIL
• Optical Character Recognition tool:
• Pytesseract (interface for Google’s Tesseract)
• Natural Language Toolkit
• NLTK

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Implementation

1. RealRx app analyzes user-submitted images of pharmaceutical labels & packaging
2. Using Pytesseract, RealRx converts semantics of the image into text-based metadata
1. Using NLTK, our program parses out irrelevant information
2. We then compare the output file to our large data set of verified labels
3. If the analysis shows fake, RealRx immediately alerts the user
• As more users submit their potential fakes, our dataset will grow and become more consistent

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Example Case

Program Output

Ondansetron Injection QTY 2 mL Vial Product may also be stared in a refrigerator Pratect from light Fliptop Vials remedy Mrepack UMA RX ONLY re NDC Lace Expires LOT source NDC MFG Hospira Inc Lake Forest IL 60045 Keep this and all medication out of the reach of children Directions For Use See Package Insert Store at excursions permitted ta See USP Repackaged by RemedyRepack Indiana PA 15701

Photo Input

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Authentic Label Database

• National Library of Medicine
• Dataset of prescription drugs, updated monthly
• Each file contains a photo of the drug label to be cross referenced with user’s the uploaded photo

From Dataset

Potential User Photo

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Possible Interface

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