Bengaluru team wins $15,000 for fake drug detection app

The students of RV College of Engineering have won an award with a prize money of $15,000 as part of Microsoft Imagine Cup for designing an app that detects counterfeit drug.

They bagged the special award under the Big Data category at the 2018 edition.

Team DrugSafe, fifth-semester students of computer science have designed an app, which will help the users to identify fake and expired medicine through scanning.

“The users should scan the medicine through the app, which will alert them about the fake and expired medicines. The students took nearly four months to design this app, which is the first of its kind,” Dr KN Subramanya, principal, RV College of Engineering told DH.

“The app uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify minute details in the design and packaging of medicines and compare them to the original manufacturer’s patented and trademarked attributes,” Subramanya said.

The app is the brainchild of Chidroop, Pratik Mohapatra and Srihari H S, who aimed to address the growing global issue of counterfeit drugs.

The students have met all the leading drug manufacturers in the country and analysed the characteristics of their medicines. Subramanya added.

“Students have used all the characteristics of the authentic manufacturers and designed the app.

This app will avoid many adverse effects that will be caused by duplicate and expired medicines. Though the work of the app looks small, it helps to avoid the major disaster in peoples health.”