AIpharmacist | Devpost

## Inspiration

Millions of people across Africa self-medicate without access to qualified pharmacists or trustworthy health advice. Clinics are far, pharmacies are overwhelmed, and even when care is available, it's rarely offered in local languages. Many rely on hearsay or unsafe combinations of herbal and modern medicine.

We were inspired to reimagine the role of a community pharmacist—by bringing their knowledge directly into people’s hands through WhatsApp or mobile, in languages they understand.

## What we built

AIpharmacist is a conversational AI tool that helps users explain their symptoms and instantly receive pharmacist-reviewed advice, dosage instructions, safe herbal alternatives, and interaction warnings—all translated to their preferred local dialect (Twi, Ewe, Hausa, etc).

It’s culturally adapted, simple to use, and works anonymously.

## How we built it

Built on bolt.new, using a one-shot prompt to generate an intelligent assistant persona
Integrated symptom parsing logic to simulate pharmacist triage
Used multilingual NLP to translate medical responses into Ghanaian dialects
Pulled from a verified Q&A base of pharmacist-reviewed guidance (structured knowledgebase)
Layered logic for drug interaction warnings and herbal alternative mapping
Focused on mobile-first experience and potential future WhatsApp API delivery

## What we learned

Building for people in local contexts is not just about simplifying—it’s about respecting culture, languages, and health beliefs. We learned how difficult it is to bridge the gap between herbal knowledge and science, and how important tone and translation are when communicating health information.