Pillbox: Pill Identification System

by Bertalan Meskó

Thursday, March 25, 2010 at 06:45 AM EDT

Pillbox is the result of a partnership between the National Library of Medicine and the Food and Drug Administration. It helps you identify unknown pills and tablets by parameters such as form, color, size or imprint. The constantly updated database now has more than 7000 entries with images.

Pillbox was developed to aid in the identification of unknown solid dosage pharmaceuticals. The system combines high-resolution images of tablets and capsules with FDA-approved appearance information (imprint, shape, color, etc.) to enable users to visually search for and identify an unknown solid dosage pharmaceutical.

This system is designed for use by emergency physicians, first responders, other health care providers, Poison Control Center staff, and concerned citizens.

The system enables users to identify solid dosage forms based on physical criteria: imprint (characters or number printed on a medication), shape, color, size, and scoring. Users are shown thumbnail images of possible matches. These images are continually updated as the user enters additional information.