Don't have a pharmacist at home? There's an app for that

Just when you thought there was already an app for everything, here comes one that that's like Shazam for pills. If, like many people we know, you take several different pills per day, at one point or another you have probably gotten confused about which one is which, or perhaps found yourself wondering whether the pharmacist handed you the wrong prescription. Fact is, most pills are nearly impossible for laymen to identify, what with their wide variety of shapes, colors and printed codes. For the visually impaired, and for people in countries with large markets in counterfeit medicines, popping the right pills is an even bigger problem. Now Seattle-based TruMedicines is offering a high-tech solution in the form of an Android app that allows mere mortals to scan their medication with their cell phone cameras and hear an audio report of all of the most important information for each, including the name, strength, side effects and more. The app, which uses cloud-based image recognition to identify pills, also offers all information in large text that can be easily read by people with poor eyesight. For tech savvy drug takers, taking your daily dose of pills just got a whole lot safer.