My job is weird. I don't mean this negatively. I mean this in the sense why are humans still doing this? Data entry of prescriptions? It seems like this is something a robot should be doing. And I don't mean this in a "robots should take our jobs" sense (even though they should). I mean this in the sense of why are we relying on humans to mash out what's written on prescriptions when the technology exists to better extract data from handwritten text and even better so from printed text.
My point is we already have millions of training examples correctly documented. If we used these as training data for a machine learning algorithm, it would be able to create immediate more accurate prescriptions for pharmacists.
Not only that, but imagine how good AI could become at reading handwriting if it can decipher doctor cursive! This potentially has many uses outside of the pharmacy just in terms of technological advancement alone.
Now this is just one possible solution to making prescription processing much faster without having just 500 monkeys at typewriters working all day doing the same thing over and over again to service Walgreens in 27 states. I'm not even exaggerating, and am probably overstating the number of people processing prescriptions as there are only two offices for this service.
But I do believe with the rapid development of AI, the availability of a vast training set, and the potential for both the pharmaceutical and AI industry (sadly, no Baymax yet) to work together to assist both fields greatly.
1) Who I am: I'm a nerd who loves 3d printing and robots and AI and all things cutting edge tech, yet my job right now is typing prescriptions all day while I daydream about robots and machine learning. I feel like a robot should take my job and I feel like it can do so feasibly and open up gateways to other options such as handwriting detection in general. I'd more be interested in the AI than entrepreneurship though. 2) What does it do: It transcribes prescriptions automatically and a company using it only needs to use human error checking rather than an entire central utility technician fleet. 3) The consumers: at first just the pharmacists and the pharmacy industry, but once the algorithm gets good at reading doctor chickenscratch, it can be used to transcribe generic handwritten notes like for students. 4) Why they should care: don't have to pay for the central utility humans' wages, and also the notetakers would save time in transcription. 5) What's...
Hassan,
ReplyDeleteI can see huge potential with a more automated system of making prescriptions and could probably cut down on people getting the wrong prescription. This would be a very expensive business opportunity but would have huge benefits. Pharmaceutical companies will spend a lot of money on products. I believe doctors should still prescribe the medicines to the pharmacies because I do not think AI can accurately diagnose people quite yet.
Yes unfortunately we don't have a real Baymax yet.
DeleteOne can dream of having a fluffy marshmallow doctor bot though lol