MedPlain AI

MedPlain AI is an AI-powered medical document understanding assistant designed to make complex medical information easier for patients, elderly users, caregivers, and people with limited health literacy to understand. PROBLEM: Medical reports, prescriptions, laboratory results, discharge summaries, and scan reports often contain complex medical terminology, abbreviations, reference ranges, and instructions. Patients and caregivers may find it difficult to understand what the document is communicating, especially when they need to identify important information quickly. SOLUTION: MedPlain AI allows users to upload a medical document as an image or PDF. The application extracts text using OCR and processes the extracted information using AI. The system then converts the information into a structured, plain-language explanation. The application can provide: • A simple summary of the uploaded document • Identification and explanation of the document type • Medicine information and schedules based on instructions present in the document • Laboratory values with their reported values, units, and reference ranges • Explanations of medical terms and abbreviations • Questions that users can discuss with their doctor • Multilingual explanations • Voice-based summary for improved accessibility • A simplified view that can be shared with caregivers WORKFLOW: User → Document Upload → OCR Text Extraction → Document Classification → AI Processing → Safety Validation → Patient-Friendly Dashboard TARGET USERS: The primary users are patients, elderly people, caregivers, families managing medical documents, and users who have difficulty understanding technical medical language. WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT: Instead of simply extracting text from a medical document, MedPlain AI focuses on converting the extracted information into an organized and understandable format. It combines OCR, document classification, AI-based language processing, multilingual accessibility, and safety validation in one application. RESPONSIBLE AI: MedPlain AI is designed as an information-understanding tool and not as a replacement for a healthcare professional. It does not diagnose diseases, predict medical outcomes, recommend new medication, or change medication dosages. It explains and organizes information that is already present in the uploaded document and encourages users to consult a qualified healthcare professional for medical decisions. TECHNOLOGY: The project uses Python, Streamlit, EasyOCR, LangChain, IBM Granite/watsonx.ai, Pillow, and automated testing with Pytest. A mock/demo mode can also be used to provide reliable demonstrations when external AI credentials or network connectivity are unavailable. The goal of MedPlain AI is to make medical information easier to understand while keeping professional medical advice at the center of healthcare decisions.