💊 AI Medicine Label Explainer (Medico)

A Local, Privacy-First AI Assistant for Elderly Users

📖 Project Overview

The AI Medicine Label Explainer is a student-level project designed to help elderly users or people with low literacy understand complex medicine labels. It takes a photo of a medicine bottle, reads the text using OCR (Optical Character Recognition), and uses a Local LLM (Large Language Model) to explain it in simple, plain English or Tamil.

Key Goals:

• Simplicity: No complex medical jargon.
• Privacy: Runs 100% offline. No health data is sent to the cloud.
• Accessibility: Large fonts, simple UI, and Text-to-Speech (TTS) support.

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🛠️ Technology Stack

This project uses Free and Open-Source tools:

• Language: Python
• Frontend: Streamlit
• OCR Engine: Tesseract-OCR (via pytesseract)
• AI Model: Ollama (running mistral or llama3)
• Text-to-Speech: pyttsx3 (Offline)

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📂 Project Structure

• app.py: The main application file containing the UI and logic.
• ocr_module.py: Handles image processing and text extraction.
• simplify_module.py: Connects to the local AI model to simplify text.
• tts_module.py: Converts the simplified text into audio.
• demo_module.py: Manages the built-in demo mode using sample assets.
• assets/: Contains sample images for testing.

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🚀 Installation Guide

1. Prerequisites

Ensure you have Python installed. You also need these two external tools:

1. Tesseract OCR:

   • Download and install from UB-Mannheim/tesseract.
   • Important: Add the installation path (e.g., C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR) to your System PATH variable.

2. Ollama:

   • Download from ollama.com.
   • Install and run ollama serve in a terminal window.
   • Pull the model we use:

     ollama pull mistral

2. Install Python Dependencies

Open your terminal in this project folder and run:

pip install -r requirements.txt

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🏃‍♂️ How to Run

1. Make sure Ollama is running in a separate terminal (ollama serve).
2. Run the application:

   streamlit run app.py

3. The app will open in your browser (usually at http://localhost:8501).

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🎮 How to Use

1. Select Language: Choose English or Tamil from the top menu.
2. Try Demo: Click the "Try Demo" tab and hit "Load & Run Demo Image". The app will automatically process the sample medicine label.
3. Upload Your Own: detailed Check the "Upload Image" tab to upload a photo (.jpg, .png) of any medicine label.
4. Read Out Loud: Scroll to the bottom and click the "🔊 Read Out Loud" button to hear the explanation.

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⚠️ Safety Disclaimer

This application is for educational purposes only.

• It explains only the text written on the label.
• It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
• Always consult a doctor or pharmacist for medical concerns.