iphone-medical-id

If you have an iPhone with iOS 8 or newer, you might want to consider creating emergency Medical ID. The purpose of emergency Medical ID is to allow health professional to quickly access it if one day they need to save your life.

To create a Medical ID, open Health app from your iPhone and choose the tab called Medical ID. There you can enter lots of health information, from date of birth, existing medical conditions, medical notes, allergies & reactions, medications, emergency contact number, blood type, organ donor, weight and height.

To access Medical ID from the lock screen, swipe right to display the screen that allows us to enter Passcode. Tap Emergency menu on the bottom left. It will show emergency screen that allows us to dial emergency number (such as 911 in the USA or 000 in Australia). If you already created a Medical ID from Health app, you will see a small Medical ID menu on the bottom left. Tap on that menu and anyone can see your important medical information without having to unlock the phone.

Since Health app is an iPhone-only app, iPad devices do not have this feature.

The intention of this feature is good and Apple has declared that they do not share Medical ID information to anyone. However, it does not change the fact that ANYONE who has physical access to our phone will be able to obtain the information. When the information is accessed by someone with good intention, this feature might be life saving. When someone with bad intention sees the information, it could lead to identity theft or other crimes. So be very careful with what you choose to write there.

Another challenge of this feature is the fact that not everyone knows about it. So doctors or paramedics or good samaritan probably won’t even know it exists, or checking Medical ID from a phone might not come as one of their first actions.

Well, the feature is there. In the end, it’s our decision whether we want to use it or not.