Symple Symptom Tracker 12+

Really useful App with excellent data extraction function

Excellent App for anyone needing to keep a track of ongoing health issues. Really easy to use, great list of symptoms and factors (less than the price of a coffee to get the full lists - worthwhile) and extremely useful journal entry. The best part for me was that you can easily record this information on a daily basis, broken down to night, AM, Mid, PM with additional personal journals/notes, all of which can then extracted into a 'doctors report' which is basically a report of all the data you have punched in, which can be emailed in PDF or excel format - perfect for review with healthcare professionals. Quick and positive responses from developers to feedback (a tweak needed to the date the journals/notes show as on the 'doctors report' which currently show as date input rather than the date they are appended to). Only other tweak I would recommend would be to allow for some customised symptoms and factors as although I found suitable ones from the lists, a couple are a slight variations of what I need. Overall an excellent app - 5 star if tweaks sorted!

I really wanted this to be the one!

I have lupus, fibro and a lot of other stuff, so as you can imagine, a health diary covering this lot has been hard to find. Today I thought I had found the Holy Grail. I paid a fiver and downloaded this app. I happily set it up on my IPad, yes it is fiddly to do but but Iwas delighted with the custom options and a lot of the features. OK, that’s the good stuff.

And why it isn’t the one! There needs to be a separate medicine section and alarm sounds for medicine reminders. At the moment they are lumped in with factors like when you ate and slept. What it also needs is a body map to map pain and other symptoms more effectively.

But more crucially for me and the dealbreaker...fast forward to what I thought would be an easy transfer to my IPhone...and nope, it doesn’t support my model, the SE or other 5’s and lower. So, a fiver down and I’ll keep searching. If, unlike me you can pick up a phone that’s bigger than mine then go for it. It is probably the best I’ve found so far.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the kind words AND the helpful feedback. We continuously strive to improve Symple and make it accessible to all...regardless of device, health status, language. Alas, sometimes we miss the mark 🎯, but we don't stop trying.

Wouldn’t recommend

Just downloaded the app to see if it was suitable, here are some first impressions:

The first thing the app requires you to do is to scroll through a list of hundreds of symptoms to select up to 5 you’d like to track. Here’s why that’s not suitable: for someone who requires this app, scrolling through irrelevant symptoms makes you feel terrible. You might not know which applies to you. You might see symptoms you didn’t know you had. There’s no search, so if you wanted to add “leg pain” you literally have to scroll around to find it.

Secondly, in order to connect to Apple Health where all of this could be recorded, you have to go hunting for the setting. It’s not provided by default.

Lastly, immediately after selecting symptoms you’re prompted to upgrade with an in app purchase, before you even have a chance to see what’s going on.

One more thing: interface looks unfamiliar and customized, it’s hard to know what does what. I deleted the app.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for asking a few questions, and I hope this helps:

I'm sorry we get you started with that long list...we should make it easier to search and we will!

Apple Health is something you have to switch on, we can't switch it on automatically. That's against Apple's privacy rules (and by the way, we totally support those privacy rules!)

Re: upgrade...oof...that's not supposed to happen. Of course, you should be able to fool around with the app before deciding whether to upgrade. I'm on it!