From medicines to matrimony, it is difficult to tell the genuine from the pretend.
By Anand Parthasarathy
Bangalore, August 1 2018: The World Health Organization came out with a scary statistic recently: Four out of 10 medicines sold in India are fake. But healthcare is not the only target of counterfeiters: Globally, lakhs of retail products in the fast moving consumer goods business are imitations and rip offs of the real thing. In 2017 alone, counterfeits worth $1.6 trillion were sold. In a less dangerous sphere, masking or whitewashing the truth is so routine in job or matrimonial matching services that it becomes a huge techno-challenge to sift truth from white lie.
But Indian ingenuity is on the job: We look at three innovative solutions — the product of desi brains — all harnessing Artificial Intelligence — and unveiled in recent weeks
Neuro Tags tell you if it is real
Now a trio of  techies -- Nitin Gupta, Yogesh Miharia and Abhishek Agarwal -- at the Pune -based TezMinds has created a fool proof solution called NeuroTags which are embedded by the manufacturer into the genuine article.   The tag's QR code has two parts one which is open and can be scanned before purchase and another which is protected and can only be scanned by scratching open,  after purchase. This provides two levels of security.  An Android or iOS app which helps scan the NeuroTag also manages the warranty and customer support.   The tag  helps the manufacturer monitor the entire stock where ever it is.   Clothing, electrical and pharma companies are already using this made-in-India technology which promises 100% detection of counterfeits.  Full story

DrugSafe tells fake  medicines from real
Last week at the Redmond (Washington) headquarters of Microsoft,  a team from Bangalore's RV College of Engineering  won a special award of $ 15,000 ( Rs 10.5 lakhs) for their entry at the 2018 Imagine Cup for student innovation.
Their solution is DrugSafe --  a combination  of artificial intelligence with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)  which identifies minute details in the design and packaging of medicines and compare them to the original manufacturer’s patented and trademarked attributes.  
The first and most basic check is that of comparing batch IDs of medicine strips.  After three levels of checks, any  differences are  used to  identify medicines as counterfeit. The  trio of students authors -- Chidroop I, Pratik Mohapatra and Srihari HS  --kept the User Interface (UI)  simple and developed the app to work across platforms so that  all can benefit from this regardless of age or technical skill. We can expect to find the app in the open soon.
Earlier story
Matchmaking -- AI style
Students in a business school in the US, asked   business guru  Warren Buffet what was the most important decision  to be made.  The answer was not some  wisdom about investment rules.  " For all men and women, the most important  decision is the choice of spouse", he said.
The right  life partner is critical   to finding health, happiness and  financial success.  This is easier said than done and the  millions who use online matchmaking services  know the challenges.   |
 Banihal is a matrimonial site  that promises to find as close to a perfect match as possible  using AI and neuroscience. It is the brain child  of  co-founder-CEO Ishdeep Sawhney  who  gave the Q&A system at the heart of  his technology,  the acid test --  to help him meet  Binu Kohli: now they are happily married. 
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