This document summarizes a new technology called MedEYE, which was developed by Mint Solutions to help reduce medication errors in hospitals. MedEYE is a scanning device that uses computer vision to identify pills and verify they match the patient's prescription before administration. It was created by MIT graduates to address the problem of medication errors, which harm millions of patients annually. The document outlines how MedEYE works, research behind its development, feedback from pilot tests, and advantages like saving nurse time and ensuring safety.

5. SUBMITTED By:
Furqan Aslam (Reg # 28733)
SUBMITTED To:
Syed Muhammad Hassan Zaidi
IQRA University Main Campus Karachi,

7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to thank our teacher Syed Muhammad
Hassan Zaidi who provided us this opportunity to
learn, understand, and enhance our knowledge and
confidence in our abilities through his teachings.
He provided us with the knowledge about complex
things in simple and easy manner. He also provided us
utilize our knowledge by writing this report. It’s been
a pleasure to be his student.
Sincere Regards,
Furqan Aslam

8. LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
17th December, 2014
S M Hassan Zaidi
Project supervisor&
CourseInstructorIqra
University
Dear Sir,
With great pleasure we present to you; our final
report on Latest Technology (MEDEYE), on 17th Dec
2014. This report on MEDEYE; is prepared keeping in
mind LatestTechnology.
This report is prepared with our own
collaboration that is why it might have some mistakes
and you are most welcome to point them out so that we
can learn and we do also want to apologize for the
mistakes or errors.
--------------------------------
Furqan Aslam (28733)

9.  Introduction
 Latest Technology
 Founding Company
 Mint Solutions
 Background
 Breakthrough Innovation
 Current Situation
 MINT Solutions Moving Forward
 Researcher
 MIT (About)
 Problems to be Solved
 Research
 Systematic Approach
 Working

10.  Feed back
 Vision for New
Technology
 MEDEYE
 Advantages
 Ensure Medication Safety
 Saves Time
 Easy to Implement
 Easy to Use
 Reception & Investment Funding
 Reference

12. INTRODUCTION
LATESTTECHNOLOGIES:
Think of the most frustrating, intractable, or simply
annoying problems you can imagine. Now think about
what technology is doing to fix them. We’re looking for
technologies that we believe will expand the scope of
human possibilities.

13. FOUNDINGCOMPANY:
MINTSolutions:
MintSolutionsis a medical devicecompany,
specializingin medicationsafety solutions for
healthcare institutions. Thecompany was founded in
2009 by three MIT graduates and is now
headquartered in Iceland. MintSolutionsis developing
Med EYE, an innovativemedication scanner for
bedsidemedication verification.
Founders: Maria Runarsdottir, Gauti Reynisson,
Ivar Helgason
Categories: Hospitals, Health Care
Website: http://www.mint.is
Board Members: Hekla Arnardottir, Eva Reichl
Investors: Seventure Partners, Life Sciences Partners,
NSA Ventures, Startupbootcamp

14. Background:
Medicationmistakes happen constantly: 1 in every 5
medication dosages is given incorrectly creating a
problem of staggering scale. Across Europe and the US
roughly 40 million dosages are delivered every single
day and almost none are beingverified, leading to a
potential 3 billion errors a year.

15. BreakthroughInnovation:
Mint Solutions’ first product MedEYE helps hospitals
to increase quality, reduce costs, and save lives. Using
state of the art computer vision, MedEYE verifies all
medication in a single step – a revolution in closed
loop verificationthat fits naturally into any hospital’s
workflow.
CurrentSituation:
Mint Solutions has secured the IP rights to its
proprietary technology. MedEYE is currently being
deployed in several hospitals and has already reduced
costs and saved lives.
MintSolutionsMovingForward:
After industrializationof our solution, MedEYE will be
rolled out across Europe and the UnitedStates. Our
visionis to end bed side medicationerrors across the
world.

16. RESEARCHER:
Massachusetts Instituteof Technology (MIT)
About: The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge
and educate students in science, technology and other
areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and
the world in the 21st century — whether the focus is
cancer, energy, economics or literature.
PROBLEMSTO BE SOLVED:
Careless staff mayexplainwhy medication errors are more
likely to occur in nursing homes than for patients self-
administering their medicines at home, research by the
Victorian Poisons Information Centre suggests.

17. A study of medicationincidents involving 97 nursing home
residents and over 600 people living at home found a
significantly increased rate of medication error in nursing
homes, caused by staffing issues such as carelessness,
distraction, staff not following standard procedures or being
unfamiliar with the patient.
Taking the wrong medicationor someone else’s medications
was more commonin nursing homes, whereas in the home
setting, errors were more likely to involve incorrect
dosages.
However home cases had slightly higher rates of error for
medications where, if taken in overdose, consequences could
be considerable. These include bupropion, calcium channel
blockers and tramadol, say the authors of the study in the
Australia and NZ Journal of Public Health (33:388-94).
Cases were reported of patients at home inadvertently
taking cat or dog tablets, and oral ingestion of vaginal
pessaries, suppositories and fish tank tablets.

18. None of the cases had a serious outcome but it was
concerning that the errors in nursing homes were largely
preventable and diverted legitimateuse of healthcare
resources elsewhere,the authors say.
“The significant differences in the nature and causes of
errors...likely reflect the differing administrators and
procedures. There is considerable scope for prevention
initiatives. In particular, attention should be directed to
staffing, training and procedural issues within [nursing
homes],” they conclude.
RESEARCH:
MIT alumni entrepreneurs Gauti Reynisson MBA ’10 and
Ívar Helgason HS ’08 spent the early 2000s working for
companies that implemented medication-safety
technologies — such as electronic-prescription and pill-
barcoding systems — at hospitals in their native Iceland
and other European countries.
But all that time spent in hospitals soon opened their
eyes to a major health care issue: Surprisingly often,
patients receive the wrong medications. Indeed, a 2006
report from the Institute of Medicine found that 1.5
million hospitalized patients in the United States
experience medication errors every year due, in part, to
drug-administration mistakes. Some cases have adverse
or fatal results.

19. Frustrated and seeking a solution, the Icelandic duo quit
their careers and traveled to MIT for inspiration. There,
they teamed up with María Rúnarsdóttir MBA ’08 and
devised MedEYE,
“a bedside medication-scanning system that uses
computervision to identify pills and check them against
medication records, to ensure that a patientgets the right
drug and dosage.”
Commercialized through startup Mint Solutions, MedEYE
has now been used for a year in hospitals in the
Netherlands (where the startup is based), garnering
significant attention from the medical community.
Through this Dutch use, the co-founders have determined
that roughly 10 percent of MedEYE’s scans catch
medication errors.
“Medication verification is a pinnacle point of medical
safety,”
says Helgason, a physician and product developer.
“It’s a complicated chain of events that leads up to
medication mistakes. Butthe bedside is the last possible
place to stop these mistakes.”

20. Mint Solutions’ aim, Reynisson says, is to aid nurses in
rapidly, efficiently, and correctly administering
medication.
“We want the device to be the nurse’s best friend,”
says Reynisson, now Mint’s CEO. The device, he adds,
could yield savings by averting medication mishaps,
which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Currently, the startup has raised $6 million in funding,
and is ramping up production and working with a Dutch
health care insurance company to bring the MedEYE to
15 hospitals across the country, as well as Belgium, the
United Kingdom, and Germany.
SYSTEMATICAPPROACH:

21. To use the MedEYE — a foot-high box in a white housing
— a nurse first scans a patient’s wristband, which has a
barcode that accesses the patient’s electronic records.
The nurse then pushes the assigned pills into the MedEYE
via a sliding tray. Inside the device, a small camera scans
the pills, rapidly identifying them by size, shape, color,
and markings. Algorithms distinguish the pills by
matching them against a database of nearly all pills in
circulation.
WORKING:
Although the hardware is impressive, much innovation is
in MedEYE’s software, which cross-references (and
updates) the results in the patient’s records. Results are

22. listed in a simple interface: Color-coded boxes show if
pills have been correctly prescribed (green), or are
unknown or wrong (red). If a pill isn’t in MedEYE’s
database — because it’s new, for instance — the system
alerts the nurse, who adds the information into the
software for next time.
“It does all the querying for the right medication, for the
right patient, and takes care of the paperwork,”
Helgason says. “We save a lot of time for nurses that
way.”
Similar systems exist for catching medication errors:
About 15 years ago, some hospitals began using barcode
systems — which Reynisson and Helgason actually
helped install in some Dutch and German hospitals. These
systems also require nurses to use a handheld scanner to
scan a patient’s wristband, and then the imprinted
barcodes on each pill container.
“But the hurdle has been getting these installed,”
Reynisson says. “Companies sell medications with
barcodes, others sell software, or barcode scanners.
Hospitals have to make all these things work together,
and it’s hard for small and medium hospitals to afford. No
one is selling turn-key barcode systems.”

23. That’s where MedEYE is truly unique, Helgason says: As
an entire system that requires no change in a hospital’s
workflow or logistics,
“it’s more usable and more accessible in health care
facilities.”
FEEDBACK:
Feedback from nurses using MedEYE to ease their
workloads has been positive, Reynisson says. And errors

24. are caught more often than expected. In fact, he recalls a
memorable moment last year when a nurse at the Dutch
hospital demonstrated the MedEYE for department heads
on a random patient. The nurse scanned four pills, which
had been assigned to the patient, and added an extra,
erroneous pill to show how MedEYE caught errors.
“MedEYE showed the extra pill was incorrect. But, to
his surprise, so were two other pills that the nurse had
assumed were correct, because another nurse had
dispensed those,” Reynisson says. “Goes to show that
even with full focus, it is common for nurses to be in a
positionwhere they are expected to catch errors made
in other parts of the medication-delivery process.”
VISION FOR NEW TECHNOLOGY:

25. Helgason conceived of MedEYE while studying in the
MIT-Harvard Health Sciences and Technology program.
In a computer-vision class in the Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, he saw that advances in
3-D object-recognition technology meant computers
could learn objects based on various characteristics.
At the same time, he started taking heed of MIT’s
burgeoning startup ecosystem, prompting him to contact
his longtime medical-device colleague.
“I remember Ívar called me one day and said, ‘Gauti, you
have to come to MIT: Everyone’s starting companies,’”
says Reynisson, a trained programmer who wrote early
object-recognition code for the MedEYE.
Seeking a change of pace from computer science,
Reynisson enrolled in the MIT Sloan School of
Management — where he saw that Helgason was right.
“There was a spirit there, where you have to go for it, find
a solution and market it, because if you don’t, no one else
will,” he says. “That attitude, and seeing others do it,
really inspires you to start a company and take the risk.”
Mint launched in 2009 with an initial concept design for
MedEYE. Entering that year’s MIT $100K
Entrepreneurship Competition helped the three co-

26. founders fine-tune their business plan and startup pitch,
receiving help from mentors, professors, and even
business-savvy students.
“That’s when we started to think of a business beyond the
technology,” Reynisson says. “We left with a fairly
sizeable business plan to take to investors and get
funding.”
The team felt unsure of the technology at first. But a 2010
demonstration at a Dutch hospital of an early prototype
— a bulkier version of the MedEYE, with off-the-shelf
parts, constructed at MIT — changed their perception.
The hospital had to identify about 250 small, white pills
of different medications that, in fact, all looked the same.
“We tried them all in our prototype at once, and it
worked,” Reynisson says. “That’s when we realized
what a change it would be for a hospital to collect data

27. and important safety information, and get it fast and
efficiently, withoutasking the nurse to pick up a pen.”
Mint Solution now has 40 MedEYE systems ready to
deploy across Europe in the coming months, with
hopes of gaining some client feedback. In the future,
Reynisson says, the startup has its sights on
developing additional medication-safety technologies.
“At the core of the startup is this belief that better
information technology in hospitals can both increase
efficiency and safety, and lead to better outcomes,” he
says. “We’re starting with verification of medication.
But who knows what’s next?”
MEDEYE:

28. MedEYE is a revolutionary approach to medication
safety in hospitals. MedEYE helps nurses work faster
and safer by verifying all medications at once, even
without barcodes, just before administration.

29. ENSURESMEDICATIONSAFETY:
THE PATENT PENDING MEDEYE™ DEVICE ALLOWS
FOR FAST AND RELIABLE MEDICATION
IDENTIFICATIONAND VERIFICATION. THE MEDEYE™
SOLUTION FITS PERFECTLY WITH ANY WORKFLOW
AND IT INFRASTRUCTURE AND REQUIRES ALMOST
NO TRAINING FOR THE USERS. SIMPLE, EASY,
PATIENT SAFETY.
Nurses must deliver the right medicationto the right
patient at the right time - but with increasing
medication complexity and demands, mistakes are
inevitable.
Research has shownthat more than half of mistakes
can be prevented by implementing a simple bedside
verificationcheck, just before the medicationis
administered.
Some of the most common mistakes are:

30.  Right medicationbut the wrong patient
 Administeringa medication for which the
prescriptionhas recently been stopped
 Wrong medicationdelivered from pharmacy
becauseof similarities innames, the so-called
"sound-a-likes and look-a-likes"
 Not registering the administrationof "as needed"
medication, leading to incorrect dosing.
MedEYE can perform this check faster and more
reliably than any other availablesolution. By checking
all medications at once, at the patient's bedside, after
the medicationhas been removed from the packaging,
MedEYE eliminates virtually all preventable
medication errors.
SAVESTIME:

31. NURSES PERFORM THEIR TASKS UNDER INTENSE TIME
PRESSURE, WHERE MISTAKES CAN COST LIVES.
Nurses perform their tasks under intense time pressure,
where mistakes can cost lives. Handling medication is
time consuming for nurses, accounting for up to 20% of
the nurses workday. Nurses perform their this task with
diligence, individually checking and double checking
every medication which is given to the patient.
With MedEYE, hospitals and healthcare institutions can
now implement a safer and faster medication check. Both
saving nurses' time and virtually eliminating the risk of
medication errors during administration.
MedEYE automatically checks all the medication at once.
The nurse simply places all the medications in the
MedEYE device and everything is automatically checked
and registered in one handling.
EASYTO IMPLEMENT:

32. MEDEYE CAN EITHER BE IMPLEMENTED AS A
STANDALONE SOLUTION OR AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF
THE EPRESCRIBING SYSTEM OF THE HOSPITAL.
Because MedEYE does not rely on any specific logistics or
nursing processes, it can be easily implemented in any
hospital. Nurses can start tomorrow and immediately
start enjoying the benefits.
MedEYE can either be implemented as a standalone
solution or as an integral part of the ePrescribing system
of the hospital. Integration with existing IT systems is
based on established standards and proven interfaces.
Adding MedEYE to your IT infrastructure is
straightforward - we will work with your existing CPOE
or ePrescribing vendor to make transition seamless for
users.
EASYTO USE:
MEDEYE IS DESIGNED WITH THE NURSE IN MIND.

33. MedEYE is designed with the nurse in mind. With
MedEYE, the nurse simply puts the medication into the
device and gets a clear "ok" signal when all the
medications are correct.
If there is something to be adjusted, MedEYE provides
simple, step by step instructions. Thanks to intuitive
design, only quick training is required.
MedEYE introduces only a minor change in workflow
making roll-out and change management
straightforward. The MedEYE software identifies, verifies
and registers the medication.
RECEPTION& INVESTMENTFUNDING:
“This financing is a significant milestone for Mint
Solutions”, said Gauti Reynisson, CEO and co-founder of

34. Mint Solutions. “Response from hospitals has been very
strong with many reaching out directly to us to learn
more about MedEYE. We now have the opportunity to get
MedEYE in the hands of nurses in a number of European
hospitals. Our starting focus is on the Netherlands”.
MINT Solutions, a hardware startup that’s developed a
scanning device designed to help hospital nurses ensure
each patient gets the right medicine and the correct
dosage, has pulled in a €4.425 million ($6 million) Series
A funding round.
The funding was led by European investment firm
Life Sciences Partners (LSP) and co-led by Seventure
Partners, with participation from existing investors.
Mint Solutions’ pill verification device, called MedEYE,
uses computer vision to identify tablets placed in a
drawer on the front of the unit — based on

35. characteristics like the size, shape, colour and markings
of individual pills (medicines are required by law to be
distinct).
The MedEYE system is designed to work with existing
hospital workflow and IT infrastructure — so, for
instance, the nurse accesses the patient’s medical
information via a wristband barcode system and is then
able to cross-reference their prescription information
with the dosage they are about to receive, getting the
latter info by scanning their medicine with MedEYE.
The aim is to improve medical safety in hospital by
preventing errors whereby patients are given the wrong
medicine or the wrong dosage of the right medicine —
either of which can obviously have extremely serious
consequences.
It also aims to streamline the pill-dispensing process for
nurses, with no need for individual tablets to carry a
barcode or be scanned one by one.
References:

36. http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mint-
solutions
http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/08/MedEYE-series-a/
http://www.agedcarecrisis.com/research/3636-staff-
problems-behind-medication-errors
http://mint.is/
http://www.startupbootcamp.org/alumni/eindhoven-
2013/mint-solutions.html
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/startup-stops-drug-
errors-0828
http://startupjuncture.com/2014/07/08/medical-
startup-mint-solutions/