Easy OCR with EasyOCR: A Healthcare Perspective

3 min readSep 8, 2023

Your guide to extracting text from images

In the fast-paced world of healthcare, efficiency and accuracy are paramount. From patient records to prescription labels, there’s a wealth of information that needs to be processed quickly and accurately. This is where Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology comes into play, revolutionizing the way healthcare professionals handle and manage text-based data.

What is OCR?

OCR is a transformative technology that allows healthcare organizations to extract valuable text data from images, scanned documents, and even handwritten notes. It enables healthcare providers to digitize, process, and organize information with unprecedented ease and precision.

Introducing EasyOCR

Among the many OCR solutions available, EasyOCR stands out as a versatile and user-friendly library, making it a perfect fit for healthcare applications. It simplifies the process of extracting text from medical documents, improving data accuracy and workflow efficiency.

Enhancing Healthcare with EasyOCR

Streamlining Administrative Tasks

In the healthcare industry, administrative tasks like patient registration, insurance claims, and billing generate vast amounts of paperwork. EasyOCR can digitize and extract information from various types of documents, including:

Patient Registration Forms: Easily capture patient information and insurance details from registration forms, reducing manual data entry errors.
Insurance Claims: Speed up the claims process by extracting information from claim forms, ensuring that patients receive timely reimbursements.
Billing Documents: Extract billing details and ensure accurate invoicing, simplifying financial transactions.

Improving Clinical Documentation

Clinical notes and patient records are crucial for providing quality care. EasyOCR can assist healthcare providers in converting handwritten notes into digital records, making it easier to access and search for critical patient information.

Handwritten Patient Notes: Transform handwritten clinical notes into digital records, improving accessibility and ensuring that important patient details are never lost.
Medical Charts and Reports: Extract vital information from medical charts and reports, streamlining the review process for healthcare professionals.

Medication Management

EasyOCR can help pharmacists and healthcare staff by extracting prescription details from handwritten or printed prescriptions, including:

Prescription Labels: Extract medication names, dosages, and patient instructions from prescription labels, reducing the risk of medication errors.
Medication Administration Records (MARs): Improve medication management by extracting data from MARs, ensuring that patients receive the right medications at the right time.

Data Mining for Research

In medical research, data plays a pivotal role. EasyOCR can expedite the process of extracting data from research papers, facilitating knowledge discovery, and accelerating scientific breakthroughs.

Research Papers and Journals: Extract relevant data and insights from scientific literature, saving time for researchers and enabling more comprehensive literature reviews.

Getting Started with EasyOCR

Now that you understand the potential applications of EasyOCR in healthcare, let's get you started on your OCR journey.

Installation
To begin, install EasyOCR by running the following command:

pip install easyocr

Creating an EasyOCR Reader

Import the EasyOCR library and create a reader instance, specifying the language(s) relevant to your healthcare data:

import easyocr reader = easyocr.Reader(['en'])

Performing OCR

Load your medical document or image and use EasyOCR to extract text:

image_path = 'referral_letter_sample.jpg'

results = reader.readtext(image_path)

Referral Letter Sample (Source: NHS England)

Accessing the Extracted Text

Iterate through the OCR results to access the extracted text and its probability of accuracy:

for (bbox, text, prob) in results:
    print(f"Text: {text}, Probability: {prob:.2f}")

Output

Conclusion

In the healthcare sector, where every second counts and data accuracy is paramount, EasyOCR emerges as a potent tool. It empowers healthcare providers, administrators, and researchers to unlock the full potential of text-based data, ultimately enhancing patient care, improving administrative efficiency, and accelerating medical advancements.

Embrace the future of healthcare data management with EasyOCR. Say goodbye to manual data entry, and hello to a world of streamlined processes and precision.