The Deep View: AI for Good … catching prescription errors

Posted on June 20, 2025 by michelleclarke2015
AI for Good: Catching prescription errors in the Amazon
Source: Rest of World
In Brazil’s remote Amazon region, where patients travel for days by boat to get their prescriptions, a 34-year-old pharmacist named Samuel Andrade was drowning in paperwork.
Andrade works in Caracaraí, an Amazonian municipality with 22,000 inhabitants spread across an area larger than the Netherlands. Until April, he spent hours each day cross-checking drug databases to ensure rural doctors hadn’t prescribed anything dangerous — often getting stuck on just a few prescriptions while dozens of patients waited in line.
What happened: Andrade now has an AI assistant developed by Brazilian nonprofit NoHarm that flags potentially problematic prescriptions and helps him verify their safety. The software has quadrupled his capacity to clear prescriptions and caught more than 50 errors since he started using it.
The AI was built by siblings Ana Helena, a pharmacist, and her brother Henrique Dias, a computer scientist and NoHarm’s CEO. They trained their open-source machine learning model on thousands of real-world drug combinations, dosage errors and adverse interactions.The software can process hundreds of prescriptions at once, identifying potential red flags like medication interactions and overdoses. It provides links to medical sources backing each warning, allowing pharmacists to make informed decisions.
Why it matters: NoHarm, supported by grants from Google, Amazon, Oracle, Nvidia and the Gates Foundation, offers its software free to public health facilities in Brazil’s overburdened universal healthcare system. Around 20 cities in the country’s poorest regions now use the technology.
“Many things slip past our eyes, or we simply don’t know,” Andrade said. “The system lets us cross-check information much faster.”
The tool recently helped rural physician Nailon de Moraes avoid prescribing dangerous dosages to patients who had traveled by boat to reach his clinic near the Branco River.
Unknown's avatar

About michelleclarke2015

Life event that changes all: Horse riding accident in Zimbabwe in 1993, a fractured skull et al including bipolar anxiety, chronic fatigue …. co-morbidities (Nietzche 'He who has the reason why can deal with any how' details my health history from 1993 to date). 17th 2017 August operation for breast cancer (no indications just an appointment came from BreastCheck through the Post). Trinity College Dublin Business Economics and Social Studies (but no degree) 1997-2003; UCD 1997/1998 night classes) essays, projects, writings. Trinity Horizon Programme 1997/98 (Centre for Women Studies Trinity College Dublin/St. Patrick's Foundation (Professor McKeon) EU Horizon funded: research study of 15 women (I was one of this group and it became the cornerstone of my journey to now 2017) over 9 mth period diagnosed with depression and their reintegration into society, with special emphasis on work, arts, further education; Notes from time at Trinity Horizon Project 1997/98; Articles written for Irishhealth.com 2003/2004; St Patricks Foundation monthly lecture notes for a specific period in time; Selection of Poetry including poems written by people I know; Quotations 1998-2017; other writings mainly with theme of social justice under the heading Citizen Journalism Ireland. Letters written to friends about life in Zimbabwe; Family history including Michael Comyn KC, my grandfather, my grandmother's family, the O'Donnellan ffrench Blake-Forsters; Moral wrong: An acrimonious divorce but the real injustice was the Catholic Church granting an annulment – you can read it and make your own judgment, I have mine. Topics I have written about include annual Brain Awareness week, Mashonaland Irish Associataion in Zimbabwe, Suicide (a life sentence to those left behind); Nostalgia: Tara Hill, Co. Meath.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a comment