Unauthoritative Pronouncements

There are many features of Apple’s Health app that I don’t have a reason to use, or to use frequently. One of the ones I had never tried before was Medications. However, I’ve basically been sick for nearly all the month of October, and have had a few different medications I needed to take on a consistent schedule for the first time over the course of this month.

Don’t worry, everything seems to be under control now, it was never anything serious as much as it was a lingering nuisance. It seemed I had something viral (likely flu), which turned into chest congestion, and doctor’s don’t rush to prescribe antibiotics any more like they did in the old days (for all the obvious reasons). That meant a week where I was taking a medication that needed to be inhaled four times a day, and a pill that needed to be taken three times a day.

Splitting up my day in a way where that made sense was much easier to do with Medications. However, what I really appreciated was that I was able to just take a photo of the prescription paperwork and the app picked up everything relevant, and promised to warn me of drug interactions (there were none for those two). It doesn’t store the image of the paperwork, or provide an OCR version of it in the app, it’s just automatically picking out the few words it needs.

Also, similar to Shortcuts, you can pick what the medication looks like (inhaler, circular tablet, elliptical pill, etc.) and also pick a color background (the symbol representing your medication is inside a circle with color). This can help distinguish the medication more easily than reading the name, which I’m grateful for.

I was a little surprised that it doesn’t grab information like the total number of pills, and the number of pills per day, and set an end date on the prescription, or ask me to set an end date. These aren’t long term medications with refills, but even if they were shouldn’t it note when I would run out? I don’t know. Seems a little weird.

My illness kind of improved, but then took a step backward so the next week I went to the doctor again. This time it was an antibiotic prescription, and another drug. Each only needed to be taken once a day, so I didn’t really need my day rigidly divided up like the previous week, but I still appreciate having a reminder to take the stuff so I’m not distracted.

I scanned the paperwork again, and this time it did note a drug interaction, but it was just a warning that the doctor had already told me about and assured me would be fine. It doesn’t list interactions for things that are not in the medication app, like vitamin supplements, antacids, NSAID painkillers, etc. All of which had very clear, urgent warnings in the prescription paperwork, but because they aren’t the two medications in the app there’s no warning.

There are warnings for lactation and pregnancy, which is important for people that are lactating or pregnant, but I don’t quite know what the usefulness of the warnings are for me. I would like to be able to personalize that, but it’s very important to have those available.

It did surprise me that the Medications app doesn’t provide anything for possible side effects that don’t have to do with lactation or pregnancy. Apparently the antibiotic that I was prescribed had six pages of paper concerning possible side effects and warnings. I could really see why taking this particular antibiotic wasn’t step one. Medications didn’t mention any of those (dire) warnings, or list them anywhere. Despite being able to OCR the prescription info, there’s nothing to OCR the side effects info and log that.

I get why Apple might not want to be legally responsible for referring me to side effects from their own database based on my prescription, and in the cases where they noted an interaction between the two medications, or the lactation and pregnancy warnings it couches the warning with “refer to your care team”. Having said that, if the pharmacy is providing the side effects at least let me OCR those pages for my own reference with some disclaimer that these side effects are from my pharmacy, not from Apple.

Also, with the non-antibiotic medication, I needed to take it once a day but the number of pills started high and tapered off twice over the following days. The app lets you put in a dosage to schedule, but I couldn’t find any way to vary it over time. Instead, in the notes field for the drug, I typed in the dosage information, and when the dosage needed to step down I manually edited the prescription info to lower the number of pills.

That’s not ideal because it’s very easy to forget what day of that medication you’re on. Also, if I refer to the log of medications I’ve taken it shows the reduced dosage on the previous days instead of what the dosage was when I took the drug. I don’t know why it retroactively changes that. When I finish this prescription the log will show I only took one pill a day, which is wrong if I have to refer to this log.

This was also a drug that should be taken with food, but there’s not a “hey, eat something” notification you can configure to come up before it’s time to take the drug. The antibiotic should really not be taken at a time anywhere near when you’re going to eat certain things, or even have most vitamin supplements, so I also have to mentally track when I do those things too. I don’t love that since it’s not represented on my Calendar with a before and after medication buffer. I can see the logged time I took the medication, if I forget, and do the math. The point of this app is to not to rely on me to remember this though, right?

Another quirk is that the notification to take your medications comes through on the Watch without mention of which medication you need to take, only “Time to log your 1:00 PM medications” and a button to log the them as taken. It’s also always plural, even if you’re only taking one medication at 1:00 PM, which is confusing. Drop the “s” it’s cleaner.

The iPhone notification displays the medication, and the little shape/color circle you selected. When I was doing the three/four week I would generally refer to my iPhone to make sure I was taking the right one, but during the once-a-day week I remember which time is which medication, but I shouldn’t have to.

Perhaps there are people that are more skilled with using the Health app’s Medications feature, and they have tips and tricks, but I haven’t come across people writing about what those are. I do appreciate having Medications, and it has helped reduce some stress and uncertainty (especially in the three/four week) so I would absolutely use it again in the future. I hope it continues to improve for things like scheduling doses that vary, and helping to store all the prescription information in one place.