DawAI Reader: AI that reads prescriptions

What I did

The idea was mine, and I ran it from the first conversation to a working device. I stayed hands-on through product development, working alongside the engineers and healthcare partners until DawAI Reader was on chemists' counters.

What was broken

In rural India, the chemist is often the first and only line of healthcare. There is roughly one trained chemist for every 4,000 people, against the WHO's recommended one per 1,000.

Those chemists are handed handwritten prescriptions they often can't read, and they have to guess. Medical errors are linked to an estimated 5.8 million deaths in India every year, and a misread prescription is one of the simplest ways for that to happen.

What we noticed

The chemist doesn't need replacing. They need a second pair of eyes that can read a doctor's handwriting, works without a smartphone habit or reliable internet, and speaks their language.

What we made

DawAI Reader is a first-of-its-kind countertop device for chemists. Place a prescription under it and it scans, decodes and reads the medicine name, dose and duration aloud in Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam or English.

Under the hood is a custom OCR engine trained on real doctors' handwriting from across India, fuzzy logic that copes with spelling errors, regional quirks and shorthand, and a cross-referenced drug database to check that what it read is a real medicine. The pharmacist always makes the final dispensing call.

Try it

A real prescription from the pilot. Press play to hear how DawAI reads it.

A handwritten prescription with one line highlighted

English

Diacerein tablet · twice a day · for 7 days

Marathi

डायसेरिन टॅबलेट · दिवसातून दोनदा · सात दिवसांसाठी

How it actually happened

The device took 14 months to build, with AI engineers, healthcare strategists and deployment specialists working together. The hard part was making serious AI usable by people who aren't digitally confident, in shops with patchy infrastructure.

The pilot launched in February 2025 across 250 villages in Maharashtra, with chemists trained one-on-one through Alkem's pharma network.

The bragging bit

100K+families reached

230K+prescriptions read

78%of chemists relied less on second opinions

62%saw more repeat patient visits

250villages in the Maharashtra pilot

Adoption spread by word of mouth alone. Hundreds of pharmacies outside the pilot zones asked for the device without any paid marketing.

“Creativity meets innovation today to change the very basics of healthcare. It isn't just a campaign, it's a solution.”
Prateek Bhardwaj, Chief Creative Officer, Lowe Lintas

The metal

Cannes Lions 2025SilverPharma
ONE Asia 2025GoldCreative Use of Data · Data for Good
ONE Asia 2025SilverCreative Use of AI · Branded AI
ONE Asia 2025Merit
Spikes Asia 2026GoldHealth
D&AD 2026ShortlistPharma · Use of AI and Technology
Spikes Asia 2026ShortlistBrand Experience & Activation · Healthcare Professional Engagement
Spikes Asia 2026ShortlistUse of Technology · Healthcare Professional Engagement
Spikes Asia 2026ShortlistCreative Data · Data-Driven Consumer Product
LBB Immortal Awards 2025Global FinalistOne of 38 pieces on the global shortlist