You want to hear some numbers that’ll curl your toes?
- An estimated 187 million Americans (58%) are on at least one prescription drug. (Source: Network for Excellence in Health Innovation [NEIH]).
- 110 million prescriptions a year are never even picked up. (Source: CVS Pharmacies based on 2008 data.)
- Up to 50% of us don’t take our medicines as prescribed (wrong times, wrong amounts, wrong meds), according to NEIH.
- And roughly 125,000 Americans die every year as a result. (Source: Research cited by the then-US surgeon general in 2012.)
They’re dying of what doctors call non-adherence—basically, not following instructions.
And
you don’t have to be old and feeble to have trouble. When I was
recovering from a kidney stone last year, my doctor told me to take
ibuprofen, two pills, four times a day; phenazopyridine, one pill, three
times a day; ciprofloxacin, two pills twice a day; docusate sodium, one
capsule, three times a day; and solifenacin succinate, one pill, once a
day.
Seriously? You’d need a spreadsheet.
Now imagine that you’re on 10 prescriptions. Or 20.
The
point is: There should be an app that reminds you of what to take when,
and records your adherence. In fact, there is an app like that—at least
47 of them, actually. I know, because I bought, installed, and tested
every single one, on a quest for the best.
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An app that tracks your meds through the day. Is that so hard?
Here’s
the complete list of apps I tried. (I originally located 75 of these
apps but eliminated apps that are over three years old, since they’re
usually pretty creaky. Many apps have identical names, so I’ve included
the full title as it appears on the app store. They’re free unless noted.)
Care4Today,
CareZone, CeyHello, Do not forget your pills, Dose Direct, Dose
Organizer ($1), Dosecast, Easy Pill ($3), GenieMD, iCare—Medication
Reminder, Mango Health—Medicine Manager, Pill Reminder, Med Helper—Pill
Reminder and Medication Tracker, MedBox—Medication Reminder and Rx
Tracker, MedCoach Medication Reminder, Medi-Prompt—Medication Reminder
and Log ($4), Medisafe Pill Reminder & Medication Tracker,
MedOClock—Free Pill Reminder with Health Journal, Meds Alert, Meds
Tracker: Medication Daily Reminder and Tracker, Memo Health—Smart pill
reminder & meds manager, Memo Pill Reminder, Mr. Pillster—pill
reminder & medication tracker ($5), MyMedSchedule Mobile, MyTherapy
Meds & Pill Reminder with Health Diary, Pill Alert, Pill
Alert—Medicine Reminder, Pill Alert—Med, Prescriptions Reminder &
Tracker, Pill Box—Your Pill Reminder, Pill In Time, Pill Monitor, Pill
Monitor Pro—Medication Reminders and Logs ($1), Pill Reminder—All in
One, Medication Reminders…, Pill Reminder—Drugs.com, Pill Reminder—
MedRem, Pill Reminder—Alarm for medicine, contraceptive, Pill Reminder
Alarm—Reminder To Take Medication, Pill Tracker Box, Pillbox—Your Pill
Reminder, Pillboxie ($2), Pills—Reminder for Daily Taking Medicine and
Pills Medication Reminder ($1), PocketNurse—Pill Reminder, Round
Health—Medicine Reminder and Pill Tracker, RX2—Meds and Pill Reminder
($3), rxRemind—Free Medicine Pill Reminder and Tracker.
Got it?
Apparently, a pill reminder is what every coder attempts as My Very First App, because most of them are terrible.
Some are just bare-bones, but others are aggressively bad. Plenty of
them crash on opening. Lots are full of typos and broken English. Many
of them make it extremely awkward to enter the pill information. Almost
all of them should instantly go into the Great App Trash Bin in the Sky.
Fortunately, there’s one shining exception.
What we want in a pill-reminder app
Dive into a few of these apps, and it rapidly becomes apparent that eight features separate the good stuff from the junk:
- Easy to enter the med’s name. In bad apps (most of them), you have to type out the name of the medicine with your finger, carefully glancing back to the drugstore bottle. In better apps, you can type the first few letters and then tap Search—and choose from a list of matches. In the best apps, you get real-time autocomplete: A list of matches appears as you type.
- Pictures of the pills. The worst apps don’t even attempt graphics. Better ones let you take a photo of your pills, or choose from a palette of pill shapes and colors. The best ones already know what the meds look like, because they’re plugged into online medicine databases. Compliance is much more likely if the reminders, instead of just saying phenazopyridine, also show a couple of maroon round pills.
- Easy to enter the times. The worst apps make you set reminder times manually. If you’re supposed to take a pill 3 times a day, for example, you might input 10 a.m., 6 p.m., and 2 a.m. The better ones let you enter “3x daily,” and the app proposes three evenly spaced times. The best ones do that but also intelligently reset the timer if you’re late taking a pill at one of the three times.
- Drug warnings. The worst apps don’t have any actual knowledge of the drugs you’ve listed; it doesn’t know “ibuprofen” from “I love Lucy.” The better apps show you a page of information about each prescription. And the best apps automatically warn you if you’ve entered two drugs that shouldn’t be taken together.
- Family monitoring. The worst apps track only your meds. The better ones let you track other family members’ meds on your phone, so that you can also remember when it’s time to dose up your kid or your parent. The best ones also let you know remotely when a loved one has missed a dose. For example, if your grandfather doesn’t tap “Done” when he gets his 6 p.m. reminder to take his heart medicine, your phone lets you know, so you can call him up and bug him.
- To Do list. The worst apps just pop up reminders when it’s time to take a medicine. The better ones also show you a tidy timeline of upcoming pills you’ll have to take today. The best apps also keep a history—a handy report of your past pill-taking record—that you can send to, say, your doctor.
- Smart rescheduling. The worst apps just remind you when it’s time to take a dose. The better ones let you indicate either Taken or Missed for each reminder. The best ones also offer options to Skip or Postpone a dose. (For example, if you’re on hardcore pain medicine that you’re supposed to take no more often than every four hours, the reminder that pops up says, in effect, “You may take a pill now.” But if you don’t need it, you can hit Skip.)
- Lock-screen dismissal. All apps make an alert appear on your iPhone or Android phone’s Lock screen. Usually, in order to indicate that you’ve taken that pill, you have to swipe that alert to open the app. The best ones offer Taken or Skipped buttons right there on the Lock screen, for less disruption and fewer steps.
As it turns out, only one app delivers all of
those features. It’s so much more complete than its rivals, with so
much more polish, that the others should slink back to the app store in
shame.
To make matters even better, this app is free. This winner, by a wide margin, is called Medisafe.
Medisafe
As you can see by the video above, Medisafe
wins you over right at the top, by auto-completing your drug names as
you enter them and showing you what they look like. It autocompletes
both prescription and over-the-counter drug names.
If
you get your prescriptions from CVS, Walgreens, RiteAid, or WalMart,
the app can even import your complete meds list directly from those
drugstore accounts, so you do no data entry at all.
It’s
got drug-interaction warnings, and even—get this—videos that offer drug
and dosage information. “This is Tamsulosin,” a doctor-looking guy says
in one, “and you should take your dose 30 minutes after a meal. You
should swallow the capsule whole, and don’t crush or chew it.” He goes
on to describe what it’s for and what the side effects can be. (The
videos cover the drugs representing 85% of all prescriptions.)
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MediSafe is smart, simple, complete, and free.
This
app makes it incredibly easy to specify when and how many you’re
supposed to take. It reminds you to refill your prescription, too.
The
app shows your drug regimen as four “pill boxes,” representing morning,
afternoon, and so on. To say you’ve taken your dose, you just swipe
across the medicine’s name, or (if you take several at once) hit Take
All. You can indicate that you’re skipping a dose, or postponing it.
There’s
a To Do list, a History report, an Apple Watch app, a built-in
tutorial, and notifications if a loved one has missed a dose.
So
if Medisafe is free, how does it make money? Kind of clever: Its
company makes money from drug companies, health plans, and doctors. Each
has a vested interest in your sticking to your prescription routine:
health insurers, because keeping you healthy costs them less; doctors,
because (a) they want you healthy and (b) sometimes the insurance
companies won’t pay them if you get re-admitted for the same ailment
within 30 days; and pharma companies, because if you take your meds on
time, you’ll have to buy refills from them sooner! Handy, no?
If you or someone you love could use a free, lovely, complete pill-reminder app, go download Medisafe.
The runners-up
Here are a few other apps worth mentioning.
Care4Today.
This beautifully simple app is a close second place. It offers a quick
visual way to check off doses as you take them, color-coded by urgency
(below, left). Offers drug info, interaction warnings, autocomplete, and
automatic pill pictures. Better yet, few apps go as far as this one to
encourage adherence. For example, it shows weekly graphs of your
adherence, including your running percentage score. And get this: For
each day that you maintain 100% adherence, the company donates 25 cents
to a charity (you can choose from a set of 9).
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Care4Today
is beautiful and rich, complete with autocomplete (center) and
charitable donations for each day you master your meds.
Pill Reminder—All in One, Medication Reminders. Very
clean, very attractive, easy to use. Type a few letters, then tap
“Search U.S. FDA Database” to autocomplete (although it doesn’t list
everything). You can specify either “3 times a day” or specify three
exact times. Options to reschedule; auto-snooze. If you have more than
two meds, you have to buy the $2 Pro version.
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“Pill Reminder – All in One…” looks great and shows simple pill graphics.
Pill Reminder—Drugs.com. Superb,
clean layout; the To Do list is also a calendar, so you can look ahead
or back to other days. Autocomplete for drug names, option to photograph
your pills. Tracks your refills; offers a password for privacy.
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“Pill Reminder – Drugs.com” is pretty great. (There are 4 other apps called Pill Reminder, though–don’t get confused.)
Pillboxie. Really
simple app, heavy on clear, attractive graphics. For example, you
schedule your dose times by dragging a picture of the pill into a
time-labeled pill-box on the screen. Lots of help screens. To Do list,
History, fun reminder sounds.
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Pillboxie’s text and graphics are big and clear enough to see without glasses.
Round Health—Medicine Reminder and Pill Tracker. Shows
a round daily graph of your progress; offers a unique but somewhat
confusing “time window” system of reminder prompts. Great autocomplete
that includes standard pill strengths—alas, no pictures. If you create
an account, you can save your med history and sync data between multiple
devices.
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Round Health shows your progress as a round graph (left). It also has autocomplete (right).
RX2—Meds and Pill Reminder. Super
efficient to schedule your doses: If you tap “3x a day,” the app
proposes the actual time slots (you can adjust the defaults in Settings,
or on the spot). When the time comes, you can tap Take, Skip, or
Reschedule. Clear, big design. View by day, week, month. Autocomplete
(although doesn’t know all med names). No pill pictures, though.
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RX2 has a bold, clear design and a choice of Day, Week, or Month views.
Happy pill taking!
I’ve
identified seven extraordinary, well designed apps that remind you to
take your meds, and track your adherence; MediSafe and Care4Today, in
particular, are spectacular.
Now,
technically, I can appreciate that a tech column is more exciting when
it covers hybrid tablets or automated drones. But this time, I thought
maybe the most exciting product is one that can save your life.
