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This version of NSU News has been archived as of February 28, 2019. To search through archived articles, visit nova.edu/search. To access the new version of NSU News, visit news.nova.edu.
This version of SharkBytes has been archived as of February 28, 2019. To search through archived articles, visit nova.edu/search. To access the new version of SharkBytes, visit sharkbytes.nova.edu.
NSU College of Pharmacy Students Hear Presentation from Pillbox Project Manager
David Hale of NLM discussing Pillbox with pharmacy students
Students at NSU’s College of Pharmacy were recently treated to a guest lecture by David Hale, who works at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and is Project Manager for Pillbox, which was developed to aid in the identification of unknown solid dosage pharmaceuticals. The system combines high-resolution images of tablets and capsules with appearance information (imprint, shape, color, etc.) to enable users to visually search for and identify an unknown solid dosage pharmaceutical. Pillbox was produced by the NLM at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is designed for use by emergency physicians, first responders, other health care providers, Poison Control Center staff, and concerned citizens.
Hale appeared as part of the Consumer Health Informatics course offered in NSU’s College of Pharmacy. The lecture was also open to student members of the Florida Society of Health-System Pharmacists (FSHP) Informatics Special Interest Group and other attendees. Hale’s presentation, “Making Superheroes: How open government, drug data, and social media are helping hackers improve pharmacy and save lives” was given live at the Palm Beach campus and broadcasted to the Fort Lauderdale, FL and Ponce, Puerto Rico campuses of NSU.
Hale spoke about the NLM’s efforts with Pillbox, a project originally created to produce freely available, high-quality images of medications that can be used for purposes ranging from pill identification to combatting drug counterfeiting. However, Hale described how the utility of Pillbox has since expanded, providing access to drug labeling data to health information technology (IT) developers and improving drug data by revealing errors in pharmaceutical company provided descriptors about some medications.
Hale later pointed out that Pillbox has also become a part of the White House’s Open Government Initiative by showing what can be accomplished when federally created resources are developed in an open, transparent, and collaborative manner. He then demonstrated a new technology which leverages Pillbox, called ID My Pill, which allows pill identification by taking a picture of it with a smartphone.
Hale gathering pharmacy students to demonstrate pill identification tech