47 Pill-Reminder Apps and This Was Ranked The Best One
(Quick Link: Download his #1 pick free here for iPhone | Android)
Consumer tech expert David tested 47 pill reminder apps and said “I’ve slogged through them all and there is one app that is so ridiculously better than the others. It’s really not even close.”
APRIL 2017 — As first reported on Yahoo Finance, consumer text expert David Pogue – a best-selling author who’s work regularly also appears on Yahoo, PBS and Scientific American – had a kidney stone and decided to review all pill reminder apps in the app stores. At first there were about 75 of them, and he whittled down the list to 47 that had been recently updated.
His verdict: “It’s really not even close. It is called Medisafe.” (Download Medisafe free for iPhone | Android)
Pogue (Website, Twitter) correctly pointed out that making sure people take their meds is a significant problem:
- 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.)
Here’s a transcript of the video:
David:
I’m David Pogue and I’m here to talk to you about apps that remind you to take your pills! Now hold on, stay there. I know that’s not as sexy as a folding laptop or an MP3 toothbrush or something, but this is important – like lifesaving important. 125,000 Americans die every year from taking their pills wrong.
Look, suppose you’re on three meds. Two orange pills, once a day, with food. One white pill, three times a day. Two blue caplets every four hours. Come on! There is no possible way you’re going to remember to do that right every day. Why couldn’t someone write a simple pill reminder app? It’s the perfect solution.
Record your meds and when the time comes to take them, you get a notification. It wouldn’t have to be complicated. All we want is an easy way to enter the complicated medicine names, preferably autocomplete, illustrations of the pills so we know what to take, a to-do list which shows what is coming up, and the option to monitor someone else’s adherence. For example, say you notice your Dad has forgotten to take his heart meds. You can call him to bug him about it. Oh, and we want all that for free without ads! Is that so much to ask?
(Download Medisafe free for iPhone | Android)
There are hundreds of pill reminder apps. Apparently, it’s the first app you learn to code when you’re learning to write apps because most of them are terrible.
Anyways, I’ve slogged through them all and there is one app that is so ridiculously better than the others. It’s really not even close. It is called Medisafe. It’s free, Android or iPhone. When you start typing the name of your medicine, check it out! The app not only knows how to spell it but lets you select the pill shape and color. It’s incredibly easy to specify when and how many. It reminds you when it’s time to refill your prescription too. Super easy to say you’ve taken your dose. You just swipe like this or hit “take all.”
You can indicate that you’re skipping a dose or postponing it if you want. There is a to-do list and history report. You can also set it up so that if you’re older or younger family member skips a dose you get a text message so you can check in with them. Not only do you get full instructions and details for each medicine, but you even get a video that explains each one in detail.
Medisafe App: This is a Kenalog (sp), 100 milligrams. You should take one tablet by mouth once daily, at the same time each day.
David: I mean, no other app does anything close to that. There are 187 million people on prescription drugs in America right now. That’s 58 percent of the whole population. They may not need one of these or one of these, but they definitely need this.
Download the App Today
Dosage scheduling. Time-of-day scheduling. Adjustments. Avoid skipping.
