One little known feature of the iPhone Health
app is the ability to create an emergency contact
card, which is populated with the most important
information about you. Should an emergency occur, anyone
who has access to your phone can quickly retrieve information
such as blood type, the medication you are taking and life-
threatening allergies. You can also include notes and advise if
you are an organ donor on your card so every base is covered
in the simplest and most effective of ways. It is easy to access
from the front screen of your phone and the person reading
it will not have access to your personal data. They can access
it immediately, although we admit that they will find it easier if
they know where to look by already owning an iPhone. It is all
too easy to ignore a feature like this or to believe that it is not
important, but we would suggest that spending two minutes
to complete it could change everything. Emergency responders
only require limited, but very specific information to ensure they
are giving you the right treatment and if you are in a position
where you cannot communicate, it makes sense to let your
iPhone do the work for you.
1: Find the card
Open the Health app and look for the ‘Medical
ID’ option at the bottom of the screen. This is
strangely an option that many people do not
notice at all.
2: Show when locked
You should now make sure that the top
option is green so that the ID will display when
the phone is locked. Your name should be
automatically be displayed.
3: Add some detail
Now spend some time scrolling through the
various options and try to complete every field.
The more detail you enter, the more useful the
card will be to others.
4: The important information
If you are unsure of the answers for some fields,
make the effort to find them and enter accurate
data in every single field. The card needs to be
valid in order to be useful.
5: Access the card
When someone picks up your phone, they
will see the word ‘Emergency’ on the pin lock
screen. When tapped, a new screen appears
with ‘Medical ID’ displayed in red.
6: A complete card
The full card will now be shown to the person
accessing it and they will have no access at
all to the rest of the data on your phone. If an
emergency happens, this could save your life.