Desenvolvimento de um aplicativo para dispositivos móveis para uso de mapeamento de embalagens de medicamentos

Abstract

Due to the growing interest of people over 60 in technology, particularly in mobile devices, these users may be integrated into an information exchange environment through their mobile phones. The use of multiple drugs is a more likely condition in people in this age group. Although necessary, these medicines most often present risks regarding adverse effects due to misuse. In the present work, a solution is proposed to assist the patient in their treatment period. For that, captured photos of the drug that will be identified with the aid of image processing and character recognition techniques. Informations such side effects from an active principal are presented in order to minimize problems in the drug. An app was designed to help seniors retrieve medicine leaflets and simplified medication information from Bulario database, provided by the National Health Surveillance Agency, Brazil. Using a captured photo, the optical recognition process is performed using the Firebase ML Toolkit, in which blocks of lines and words are returned. Next, a pattern matching is applied aiming at recovering the name of the drug in question from Bulario database. A mobile version of the app is presented. In our tests, a database containing six popular medicines, allowed to a 100% correct drug recovery rate. The presented application is fully offline and does not require an Internet connection in order to work. This possibiliates the use in rural and remote areas. The application is freely available under Gnu Public License version 3.0 on the open source platform Github.