HYDERABAD: A simple question — how do visually impaired people tell their medicines apart? — prompted Rehan Raza, a former student of Devnar School for the Blind in Hyderabad, to develop a talking medicine box. The device announces the name, dosage and timing of each medicine, helping visually impaired people manage their medication more independently. His innovation has earned him national recognition.
Identifying medicines without being able to see them can be a daily challenge, particularly when tablets look or feel alike. Rehan recognised this difficulty through conversations with visually impaired friends at school, some of whom depended on their parents to identify medicines and hand them the correct tablets.
His project, Smart Medicine Box for the Visually Challenged, was among five projects from Telangana selected for national recognition at the 12th National INSPIRE Awards-MANAK Exhibition, held recently at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. Of the nearly 780 projects showcased, 62 were selected for recognition, with Telangana securing five awards and finishing third nationally.
After completing his matriculation from the Devnar School for the Blind, Rehan is now pursuing his Intermediate education at a junior college. He is also preparing for engineering entrance examinations, including JEE Main and EAMCET.
“I am visually impaired myself. When I was studying at Devnar School for the Blind, I had friends who were also visually impaired. Some of their parents were visually impaired too. I wondered how they identified and took their medicines. When I asked them, they said their parents identified the medicines by touch. But if two medicines felt similar, there was a possibility of confusion,” Rehan told TNIE. “That is when I started thinking about developing this box.”
The device has five compartments — one for storing a prescription and the remaining four for individual medicines. The prescription can be written in Braille. Its key feature is a voice-recording and playback module. Each compartment has a dedicated button that plays audio instructions about the medicine stored inside, including its name, dosage and prescribed time of intake. Users can listen to the instructions before accessing the medicine.
To prepare the recordings, Rehan used an AI-powered feature in a mobile application to scan the medicine and retrieve information about it. The details can then be recorded in the voice module, eliminating the need to scan the medicine repeatedly.
The box also has automatically opening compartment doors, allowing users to access the required medicine after listening to the instructions. An alarm can be set to remind them when it is time to take their medication. The device operates on either a direct power supply or a battery.
By combining audio instructions, Braille labels and reminders, Rehan hopes to make medication management safer and reduce visually impaired users’ dependence on caregivers.