Vietnamese student uses AI to digitize doctors' cryptic handwriting, wins Amazon funding
A Vietnamese high school student and his friends have developed an AI system that can decipher doctors' handwriting and digitize medical records, with Amazon providing US$35,000 to support its further development.
Nguyen Hoang Gia Minh, a high school student in Hanoi, and his friends created SmileScan, an AI-powered tool designed to digitize medical records for Operation Smile Vietnam. The tool uses a phone's camera to scan handwritten records, automatically fill in data, and store the information. This saves time and effort in medical record-keeping.
Minh has volunteered for Operation Smile since his ninth-grade year, helping with mobile clinics that treat children with facial deformities. He observed that doctors still relied on handwritten records and Excel spreadsheets, making it difficult to track treatment progress and create medical reports. The system relies on a large language model to recognize handwriting and specialized medical terminology, which can vary among doctors.
The team compiled a list of common medical terms and photographed nearly 2,500 patient records to train the AI. After multiple improvements, the system achieved 90% accuracy, verified by data from dental checkups in Quang Ngai and Hue. The project won an award at a Japanese young researchers' conference, and Operation Smile Vietnam praised the students' efforts.
SmileScan will continue to be developed and integrated into Operation Smile's digitization projects, with Amazon providing $35,000 in funding. The team plans to expand the system to handle surgical records and make it multilingual for use in dental screening programs worldwide.
Written by urgent.news from VnExpress International's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
