Medil App returns
How an Old Medical App Developed During Medical School and Used by Tens of Thousands Was Brought Back to Life with Modern AI
Many years ago, during my clinical rotations as a medical student, I found myself repeatedly facing the same problem.
I needed quick access to information about medications - indications, active ingredients, formulations, manufacturers, and other prescribing information. Yet in many parts of the hospital, internet access was slow, unreliable, or simply unavailable. Looking up a medication could take far longer than it should.
Out of that frustration, I decided to build a solution for myself.
Over the course of a few days, I developed an Android application called Medil (תרופון מדיל), a searchable index of medications available in Israel. The idea was simple: place the entire drug database directly on the phone, allowing healthcare professionals to search medications even without an internet connection.
What began as a personal project quickly became surprisingly popular. Over time, the application accumulated more than tens of thousands installations and maintained a rating of 4.8 stars on Google Play.
The application allows users to search medications by:
Trade name
Active ingredient
Therapeutic class
Barcode scanning
The information is based primarily on the Israeli Ministry of Health Drug Registry and includes:
Active ingredients
Indications
Drug classifications
Health basket inclusion and restrictions
Manufacturer and registration holder information
Drug prices
Links to official patient and physician leaflets
Links to Ministry of Health images
Selected information from DailyMed and FDA resources
For many years, the application served physicians, pharmacists, medical students, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who needed quick access to drug information at the point of care.
Unfortunately, software ages.
Over the years Google repeatedly changed the Android development environment. Libraries that the application depended on became obsolete and eventually stopped working. Between residency, clinical practice, research, teaching, and family life, I simply never found the time to modernize the codebase.
Eventually, the application could no longer be maintained and was removed from Google Play.
To my surprise, some users continued downloading old versions from third-party app stores long after the official version had disappeared.
Recently, advances in large language models changed the situation completely.
Using ChatGPT and Gemini, I was able to revisit a codebase that I had not touched in years, upgrade it to modern Android libraries, resolve compatibility issues, and add several improvements. Tasks that would once have required weeks of work could now be completed in hours.
Today, Medil is back.
The application has been updated, improved, and is once again available through Google Play.
I still use it regularly, and although I may be somewhat biased, I believe it remains one of the fastest ways to access medication information relevant to clinical practice in Israel.
Download:
app.medil.co.il
I would be delighted to receive suggestions, bug reports, and ideas for future improvements.