Tips For Storing And Tracking Medical Data With An iPhone
Here’s how you can track and log your medications and vitamins inside the health app located on your Apple Device. We are So excited about this one because now since the introduction of iOS 16, you’re finally able to fully track and log all your medications and vitamins inside of the health app on your iPhone and do the tracking and get similar features in your Apple Watch as well.
This works amazingly well, and most people love how Apple is now able to provide helpful alerts on drug interactions, whether it’s things like your daily medicine or alcohol or marijuana, that you may consume regularly or between two different medications that you could be taking at the same time and not even realize that there is a problem with it.
If all of this is brand new to you then you missed out on the most major part of iOS 16, so we are going to go ahead and show you how to use this daily with your iPhone and Apple Watch.
Medication Tracking
New medication tracking is found inside of the health app, so you are going to go and open the health app and under Browse, head to Medications. There’s a little setup medications panel that lets you know how you could set up a medication and what you can do with it. Then there is more information about tracking your medications, these little articles that Apple does inside of the health app.
You hit add medication and can search for the medication that you want to add to this. So, once you start typing in the search bar, it turns out there are a lot of different medicines that are like your medicine.
Scanning Prescriptions
So instead, you can cancel and add medication again, but this time use the camera. Now it’s going to rely on that camera to scan the label of your given medication. So, once you see the search bar there is going to be a small camera icon, press it. So, if you put your medicine label right in the frame. It will be able to detect which medicine it is and it gives you a few different options for how much is in that medicine Mg
Setting Time
Now it will ask you how often you are taking this medication. So, for most people, it’s every day and you can add a time for example let’s go ahead and say 2:55 PM.
Selecting Pill Shape
Now go ahead and hit next. You don’t need to choose the pill type but if the shape helps in remembering then we recommend that you use the shaping. There are all these different options for pills, everything from vials and syringes to drops, powders, creams, and all sorts of things.
Selecting The Color Of The Pill
Most of the time this happens to be a pill. So, you can choose that as the shape. Next, you can give it a color. Sometimes they do look like they have multiple colors, but this majorly is concerned with your pill. These color descriptions are for people of old age or those who forget which pill, so this color identification helps in finding the pill. So, if for example, it happens to be that kind of brown-looking color, you can choose that.
Adding Notes
You can even add any notes. All you need to do is to add them and then hit done. Now it’s edited your medication to the list, and it’ll prompt you to take it every day at 2:55. You can look at this medication and see more information on it when It was included in the list. You can export this as a PDF if you want to share it with anyone and you can monitor these drug interactions.
So, every day at 2:55 p.m. it’s going to be Reminding you to take your designated medicine and you can log it as taken, Mark skipped or remind me in 10 minutes right here from the lock screen. But you can also do this with your Apple Watch. Let’s go ahead and look at how the Apple Watch works as well.
Apple Watch Functionality
So here on your Apple Watch, you will get a notification on taking your medications. You can mark this as taken or log skipped like on my iPhone. In this case, you are going to log your medicine as taken. Now if we go back, you can hop here and go to the new Medications app on the Apple Watch. This shows you all the medications that you take.
Benefits Of Health App keeping Track Of Medicinal Records
- So here inside of the health app, you can see that you have been logging in your medication.
- You can see the days on the top that you have skipped.
- You will be able to see the option to log your medicine for the day. you can tap on that plus button, say skipped it or I took it.
- If you have multiple medications, I can mark all of them as taken.
- You can edit this list to read.
- Move or reorder any medications that you have in there.
- You can animate medication quickly.
- You can export my list as a PDF if you want to share it with the health professional, and any possible drug interactions will be found here.
Different Drug Interaction Feature
You can add all your taken drugs to the list just to see how the different drug act interactions can show, go ahead and add another medication to the list. Let’s go and talk about something like Alcohol, marijuana, or other drugs like medical tablets. So, we’ll go ahead and add this. We’ll say every day you can pick a time.
But after you have added this to your list now. If you look down here on drug interactions it is going to range all your drug interactions either as moderate, serious, or Critical, so for example, if there’s one serious drug interaction that you should be aware of it will display in the drug interactions as a warning. So as an example, it looks like your medicine and alcohol do not mix. So, you need to know that.
It’s not critical, but it is very serious, and you can learn more information by tapping into that and it will explain why it’s giving you warnings about why you should not be doing that. If you go back, you can edit these interaction factors and add marijuana or tobacco if you regularly consume those. We don’t see any other number of interactions here that need to worry about.
Archiving Medicines
But you can turn those off if you need to and it’ll Alert you if there is anything else you need to worry about. Fortunately, we can go ahead and archive this from the list. Anything that’s been archived and goes to archive medicate medications, you can swipe and unarchive it and add it back to your list of current medications.
If you ever need to delete an archived saved medicine, go to the archive medications you can scroll to the bottom hit delete archived medication, and permanently delete the history from the list.
Conclusion
When adding a medication here you went to their multiple different types. So, a tablet, time release, injectable, extended-release all of that so you can go ahead and hit next. You are going to choose my string because the common one there are pre-chosen options for it.
You are going to go ahead and add this and are going to skip what the pill looks like. We’re adding this so that you may understand the functioning of your medicinal interactions and understand how it works. you want to see another interaction.
So, see the interaction process in action add the two drugs digoxin and verapamil and if you look under drug interactions, you now have a new option. So, both those medications do not go well together and there’s also the problem with those two. So, you can see between these different medications, not just alcohol, marijuana, or tobacco but medicinal drugs too. Now you have understood how medicinal interaction works in the health app.
FAQs
What is The Advantage Of Using The Apple Health App For Monitoring My Medical Records?
- So here inside of the health app, you can see that you have been logging in your medication.
- You can see the days on the top that you have skipped.
- You will be able to see the option to log your medicine for the day. you can tap on that plus button, say skipped it or I took it.
- If you have multiple medications, I can mark all of them as taken.
- You can edit this list to read.
- Move or reorder any medications that you have in there.
- You can animate medication quickly.
- You can export my list as a PDF if you want to share it with the health professional, and any possible drug interactions will be found here.
What is The Use Of Medicinal Interactions?
You can add all your taken drugs to the list just to see how the different drug act interactions can show, go ahead and add another medication to the list. Let’s go and talk about something like Alcohol, marijuana, or other drugs like medical tablets. So, we’ll go ahead and add this.
We’ll say every day you can pick a time. But after you have added this to your list now. If you look down here on drug interactions it is going to range all your drug interactions either as moderate, serious, or Critical, so for example, if there’s one serious drug interaction that you should be aware of it will display in the drug interactions as a warning. So as an example, it looks like your medicine and alcohol do not mix.
So, you need to know that. It’s not critical, but it is very serious, and you can learn more information by tapping into that and it will explain why it’s giving you warnings about why you should not be doing that. If you go back, you can edit these interaction factors and add marijuana or tobacco if you regularly consume those. We don’t see any other number of interactions here that need to worry about.
Give Me An Example To Search For Understanding Medicinal Interactions.
When adding a medication here you went to their multiple different types. So, a tablet, time release, injectable, extended-release all of that so you can go ahead and hit next. You are going to choose my string because the common one there are pre-chosen options for it.
You are going to go ahead and add this and are going to skip what the pill looks like. We’re adding this so that you may understand the functioning of your medicinal interactions and understand how it works. you want to see another interaction. So, see the interaction process in action add the two drugs digoxin and verapamil and if you look under drug interactions, you now have a new option.
So, both those medications do not go well together and there’s also the problem with those two. So, you can see between these different medications, not just alcohol, marijuana, or tobacco but medicinal drugs too. Now you have understood how medicinal interaction works in the health app.
What Are The Steps I Need To Go Through To Add a Pill To The Health App?
Setting Time
Now it will ask you how often you are taking this medication. So, for most people, it’s every day and you can add a time for example let’s go ahead and say 2:55 PM.
Selecting Pill Shape
Now go ahead and hit next. You don’t need to choose the pill type but if the shape helps in remembering then we recommend that you use the shaping. There are all these different options for pills, everything from vials and syringes to drops, powders, creams, and all sorts of things.
Selecting The Color Of The Pill
Most of the time this happens to be a pill. So, you can choose that as the shape. Next, you can give it a color. Sometimes they do look like they have multiple colors, but this majorly is concerned with your pill. These color descriptions are for people of old age or those who forget which pill, so this color identification helps in finding the pill. So, if for example, it happens to be that kind of brown-looking color, you can choose that.
Adding Notes
You can even add any notes. All you need to do is to add them and then hit done. Now it’s edited your medication to the list, and it’ll prompt you to take it every day at 2:55. You can look at this medication and see more information on it when It was included in the list. You can export this as a PDF if you want to share it with anyone and you can monitor these drug interactions.
How Does The Apple Watch Help in Medicinal Tracking?
So here on your Apple Watch, you will get a notification on taking your medications. You can mark this as taken or log skipped like on my iPhone. In this case, you are going to log your medicine as taken. Now if we go back, you can hop here and go to the new Medications app on the Apple Watch. This shows you all the medications that you take.