Digital Smarts - An App That Could Save Your Life

Perhaps you have been told to create a contact in your phone labeled ICE, for “in case of emergency,” filled with the name and number of a spouse, parent, child or friend who should be notified if anything should happen to you. The problem with that is if your phone is locked with a passcode or fingerprint, it might be impossible for someone to find that contact in an emergency. Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 8, has created a possible solution to allow access to emergency contacts without unlocking the phone. The process to set it up is quite simple:

1) Click on the new Health app that is now part of every iPhone running iOS 8, and choose Medical ID from the lower-right-hand corner.

2) The first time you do this, you’ll get a descriptive screen about Medical ID and a button to Create Medical ID. On future visits to the Medical ID page, you’ll see an Edit button in the upper right.

3) Make certain that Show When Locked is activated (if you don’t, no one will be able to see this without first unlocking your phone). Then enter your name, date of birth, medical conditions, allergies, medications and critical notes about your health. You can also enter several emergency contacts. Judgment is key here, but for most people 2-3 contacts seems like a good number. You never know where you’ll be when an emergency strikes and who might not be reachable. It’s also probably a good idea to include a photo here, just to reassure someone who is trying to help you that they have the correct person’s information.

Although this feature requires you to give up a bit of privacy here, you are giving emergency responders and Good Samaritans a chance to get your information quickly.  For that reason, you might not want to include information about your health that isn’t critical for someone to know, and you might want to limit whose phone numbers you place there. There are a myriad of privacy issues that could arise, so you have to decide for yourself if having this information accessible on your or your children’s devices is a good safety solution for you. As a parent, you might just want that info readily available on a young teenage driver’s phone. For Android users there are similar apps available, such as Medical ID.