Apps have great potential for making life with chronic illness a little easier. But finding the ones that work well for your needs can be difficult. To help, we compiled a few top-rated free apps for managing chronic illness.
Medication management: Medisafe
Medisafe is mentioned in the chronic illness community and elsewhere as one of the best, easiest-to-use medication tracking apps—especially for those taking multiple medications. The app tracks pill schedules, refill needs and even the best prices. The app is clean and simple, and can share information between patients, doctors and pharmacies.
Flare prevention: Flaredown
Flaredown is essentially a health-tracking app, but it was designed by and created for people with chronic illness with the intention of learning to prevent flares. If you check in with the app regularly, it crunches the numbers on your health. That information goes into charts and graphs, which helps you understand how your treatments impact you. While the app includes basic support for any chronic condition, some extra support exists for certain diseases. You can also allow Flaredown to share your data anonymously with chronic illness researchers.
Health tracking: Apple Health, Google Fit
To track and focus more on wellness, the Google and Apple health apps are a good, broad base to start from. They track blood sugar, calories burned, heart rate and cholesterol, among many other features. Users can place emergency health information on their lock screens. The apps integrate with many other fitness apps—allowing you to customize your health record. For example, connecting it to Achievemint can help you earn a small cash reward for recording healthy actions.
Navigating health care costs
For navigating your own unique health care costs, your first stop might be your health insurance company’s app, followed by your pharmacy’s app and condition-specific apps.
For a great catchall app, try: iTriage Health.
This app allows users to search symptoms and find potential causes. Next it explains treatment options, and suggests nearby doctors and facilities, providing wait times when available. It can estimate care costs, including insurance information in some cases.
Tip: In general there are many apps to help you budget, invest and save money on daily expenses like gas, Wi-Fi, groceries, hotels, flights and more. Here’s a good list of those.
Healthy eating apps
Dozens of apps exist to help those with dietary restrictions or preferences make and find better eating choices. Try HealthyOut to search area restaurants by menu, or ShopWell to navigate healthier options while grocery shopping.
But for an app to quickly reduce a little of the stress in your life surrounding meal planning, try: Mealime.
It builds a healthy meal plan and grocery list for you instantly once you answer a few questions about your needs. You can customize the plan and shopping list. Recipes are all 30-minutes to cook and can be followed inside the app. Its community threads are a space for recipe, app or health recommendations. However, note that the dietary restriction options are limited and more advanced features are paid-only.
Is specific nutritional information more important than saving time? Try AllRecipes—it’s a bulkier but much more customizable experience.
Know of any other great free apps for managing chronic illness? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram!
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