Hear the medicine label read aloud, straight from the medicine box.

With a small tag from the pharmacy on the box, all you do is hold your phone against it. The phone then reads aloud what the medicine is called, its strength, the dosage, and when the medicine expires. No pharmacy writes tags yet, so this page is an invitation.

We have built the technology: the tag, the read-aloud and the page that opens when you hold your phone against the box. What’s missing is the pharmacies — no tag is on any box yet, and no date is set. This page is an invitation to pharmacies who would like to start with us, and to you if you’d like to ask your pharmacy for it.

Take part in a pilot How it works What can I do right now?

No appNo accountThe read-aloud sends nothing to us

The film: Etiketten som talar42 seconds. The film is in Swedish, with Swedish captions.

Read what is said and shown in the film (in Swedish)

On screen:En vit medicinask i halvmörker. Texten på etiketten är suddig och går inte att läsa.
Det enda på asken som handlar om just dig … går inte att läsa.
On screen:Punktskrift lyser upp, bokstav för bokstav: E-X-E-M-P-E-L-M-E-D-I-C-I-N.
Punktskriften säger vad medicinen heter. Aldrig hur du ska ta den.
On screen:Rubriken ”Tanken”. En liten rund tagg sitter på asken.
Tanken: apoteket fäster en liten tagg på asken, med samma text som på medicinetiketten.
On screen:Texten ”Håll mobilen mot asken.” En mobil hålls mot taggen, ljusringar sprider sig och etiketten blir skarp.
Exempelmedicin, femhundra milligram. En tablett två gånger dagligen, med maten.
On screen:Etikettens ord skrivs fram ur en ljudvåg medan de läses upp. Texten ”Ordagrant. Inget tolkat, inget förkortat.”
Ingen app, inget konto.
On screen:Fem rader dyker upp, en i taget: namn, styrka, dosering, utgångsdatum och bipacksedeln. Bipacksedeln öppnas som en sida med stor text.
Namn, styrka, dosering, utgångsdatum och hela bipacksedeln. Allt finns där, när du behöver det.
On screen:Doris i apotekarrock. Texten ”Vi har byggt tekniken. Hjälp oss att sprida det.”
Vi har redan byggt tekniken. Nu behöver vi din hjälp att sprida det: berätta för ditt apotek att du vill ha det.
On screen:Slutbild: Etiketter för blinda, hejdoris.se/medicinetiketter-for-blinda.
hejdoris.se

THE PROBLEM

The one thing on the box that is about you is the one thing you can’t read

The medicine label carries what the doctor decided for you: how much to take, how often, and what to watch out for. That text is what decides whether the medicine does any good. And it exists only in print.

The braille on the box doesn’t help. It comes from the manufacturer and says what the medicine is called and how strong it is — never how you should take it, because that is decided long after the box left the factory.

And many people who lose their sight late in life never learn braille. So even what is there reaches nowhere near everyone.

So at home you are holding a box you can’t read. You have to ask someone to read it to you, or trust that you remember it right.

A pair of older hands holding a white medicine box up to the light from the window. The reading glasses lie on the kitchen table beside them. — Illustrative image

THE SOLUTION

How it works

Three steps. None of them asks you to learn anything new.

Step 1: The pharmacy writes the tag
As the prescription is dispensed, the pharmacy staff write a small NFC tag and stick it on the box, next to the medicine label. The same text as on the label — nothing added, nothing taken away.
Until pharmacy systems have Doris built in, staff can fill in the label on a computer and hand it over to a phone with a QR code.
Illustrative image — this is how it’s meant to look
Step 2: You hold your phone against the box
Most phones from the last few years read the tag by themselves. No app to install, no account, nothing to set up. A page opens.
Illustrative image — this is how it’s meant to look
Step 3: The label is read aloud
You hear what the medicine is called, its strength, the dosage and the expiry date. The page is built to be read aloud — VoiceOver, TalkBack — and for anyone with a little sight left: large text, high contrast, one single thing on the screen. Hear it as many times as you like, and if you want to read more, the whole patient leaflet is one tap away.
This is roughly how it sounds. An example with an invented dosage — not a prescription.
Read aloud
Example medicine, 500 mg
1 tablet twice a day with food
Expiry date March 2028
The whole patient leaflet is one tap away
Dispensed August 2026Signed by the pharmacy

Word for word. Nothing interpreted, nothing shortened.

What’s read aloud is exactly what stands on the medicine label. We do not interpret it, rewrite it or cut it down. If the text doesn’t fit on the tag we refuse to write it — better that than trimming a prescription.

That is a different thing from the Doris app, which guesses at a schedule from a photograph and asks you to check the guess. A tag doesn’t guess. It carries the text, full stop.

THE PRIVACY

The label is read on your phone, not by us

What this means for you: when your phone reads the label aloud, nothing is sent to us; it all happens on your phone. The rest of this section is mostly for pharmacies and for anyone who wants to see exactly how it works.

This one is worth understanding properly, because it is what lets a pharmacy use this without handing us a single patient detail. So we will show you on a real tag.

A web address can have a part after the # character. That part is special: the browser never sends it to any server, it stays on the phone. Everything about the medicine goes there. Here’s what the address on a tag looks like:

The address on a real tag

https://hejdoris.se/_

Reaches our server

#

Stays on the phone

Open the page the tag leads toThis is exactly what the phone shows when you hold it against the box.

Before the # character sits the address of the page — as short as it can be made, to fit on the tag — and nothing else. That’s the only part that reaches us, and it says nothing about you. Everything after the character stays on the phone: the page reads it, checks the signature and reads the contents aloud, without fetching anything, asking anyone or sending anything. Which is why it also works with no network. The one exception is your own choice: if you open the patient leaflet, the page asks first, and then we learn which medicine it is — nothing more.

You don’t have to take our word for it. Anyone can open the network tab in their browser, hold a phone against a tag, and watch the page send nothing at all.

The pharmacy’s signature

The tag is signed by the pharmacy that wrote it. A tag made by anyone else is recognized as false and isn’t read aloud.

The month, not the day

Doses change, but the tag stays put. So the tag says which month the box was dispensed, which makes an old box recognizable as old. The month only — an exact date says more about a person than it needs to.

No more secret than the label

Anyone holding a phone against the box can read all of this, just as anyone holding the box can read the medicine label. The point isn’t that the tag is secret. The point is that we can’t read it.

Do you have Doris on your phone?

Then a tap against the tag can offer to build a schedule out of the dosage, with reminders at the right times. And because the month is on the tag, the app can say so if the box is older than your latest change of dose.

But only offer. Nothing is entered until you’ve said yes. You should be able to hold your phone against a box without the phone starting to decide things for you.

If you don’t have the app, the tag works exactly as well. It exists so that the dosage can be heard — not to get you into Doris.

Common questions

Where on the box is the tag?

Where it sits is something we decide together with the pharmacies in the pilot, so that it can be found by touch. The tag is a small round sticker, and you need not hit it exactly: move the phone over the box and it finds the tag when they meet.

Where on the phone do I hold the box?

On an iPhone the reader is at the top edge, so hold the tag on the box against the upper part of the phone. On most Android phones it is on the back, roughly in the middle.

Do I need to set anything up?

On an iPhone from the last few years: no, it reads the tag by itself when the screen is on. On Android, NFC has to be switched on in the settings, and on many phones it already is. No app and no account on either.

Does it work with VoiceOver and TalkBack?

Yes. The page that opens is an ordinary web page, built to be read aloud by the phone’s own screen reader, with large text and high contrast for anyone with a little sight left.

Is it one tag per box?

Yes. The pharmacy writes the tag when the medicine is dispensed, and it carries that box’s own label and expiry date. Collect a new box and it gets a new tag.

What does it cost?

That is not decided. The price is settled together with the pharmacies in the pilot, and there is no price yet, neither for the pharmacy nor for you.

No tag is on any box yet. Would you like to start with us?

We’re looking for pharmacies, pharmacy chains and organizations for blind and partially sighted people who would like to talk about a pilot.

What we need to know is how it works in reality — at the counter, with real staff under real time pressure. That’s not an answer we want to invent ourselves.

Are you blind or partially sighted and have opinions about this? Write to us as well. We’d rather build the right thing from the start than the wrong thing quickly.

Want it yourself?

Tell your pharmacy you want it. Every question at the counter makes it easier for them to say yes.

Write to us

Or email us directly at hej@hejdoris.se

A pharmacist sticking a small round tag on a medicine box across the counter, while the customer waits — This is how it’s meant to go at the counterA stock photo, not a pharmacy we work with

For those of you who work at a pharmacy

Ordinary NFC stickers of the NTAG215 type — no special tags.
The tag is written at the counter with an ordinary phone, as the prescription is dispensed.
The package is identified by NPL pack id, not by article number. Article numbers get reused and may mean a different medicine ten years from now.
Every tag is signed with the pharmacy’s own key. The format is frozen: a tag that has once been written must always remain readable, even as we build on.
When the tag is read, no details reach us, and it is not tied to any person or any account. Only someone who chooses to open the patient leaflet tells us which medicine it is.
In time this should sit inside your own system. Until then there is a bridge: fill in the label on a computer, and the page shows a QR code that the Doris tag writer on a phone reads. Nothing is saved along the way.