Computer vision can tell these pills apart – but can your 75 year old patient?

Often busy clinicians ask us “Why should I take the time to open up the patient’s bottles of pills? Do I really care what the pills they have look like?”

Quick answer: You should.

We know that outpatient medication errors and non-adherence are huge problems within healthcare. They drive preventable readmissions and ER visits.

It’s recently been established that changes in the appearance of generic medications cause patients to be less adherent to their regimen (http://bit.ly/1zDwTTZ).
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Treat the patient, not the record — Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the brown bag of pills

On my ICU rotations as a medical resident, a fundamental teaching point from our professors was to never be fooled by all of the flashing data about your patient on the various bedside LCD screens. Always verify the data. Your primary point of reference should always be the person lying in the bed, not just the data being seductively presented all around them. Continue reading

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