LIFE HACK
A better way to manage your meds
Medisafe Pill Reminder
Medication and Tablet Tracker
Keeping track of your medications isn’t just a matter of remembering to take a pill. Between learning each prescription’s guidelines (“Can I take this on an empty stomach?”) and minding potential drug interactions, there’s a lot to keep tabs on.
The Medisafe app helps carry the load. It’s a one-stop destination for managing your medications, and helps you keep tabs on family and friends by pinging you if they don’t report taking theirs. (The Medisafe company encourages users to employ it in conjunction with regular consultations with their doctor.)
The app can be especially useful for patients with chronic conditions, who must juggle a mix of medications and treatment. For those living with HIV, Medisafe helpfully tracks CD4 count, HIV viral load and testosterone levels. And privacy is at its core: your personal information never leaves your iPhone unless you opt to sync it across devices.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented new challenges. In the spring, the company surveyed users about their most pressing pandemic needs. “People told us they needed trusted information on a daily basis,” says Medisafe VP Brian Carr. The team responded by partnering with Everyday Health to launch a special COVID-19 room in the app that helps users keep up with breaking health news.
Not surprisingly, Medisafe was born of necessity. Two brothers, Omri and Rotem Shor, founded the company after their diabetic father accidentally took an extra dose of insulin and was hospitalised. To date, the Medisafe app has been downloaded more than 7 million times, according to the company. It has 41,000 ratings, but more important are the stories of how it has saved lives.
There was the woman who was alerted while holidaying in Amsterdam that her mother in the United States forgot to take her meds. The patient who discovered that medication prescribed by her dentist conflicted with her back-pain medicine. The mother in St. Louis who used the app to help her manage her son’s Crohn’s disease.
Most impressive, company research has found that people take their meds more consistently when they use the app – which is exactly what Medisafe was hoping to see.