If you were involved in a serious accident and was unable to answer questions, how would emergency personnel know your essential medical information such as allergies or health care directives?
One of the first places emergency personnel will look at is your smart phone.
It takes only a couple of minutes to add the right information to your phone so emergency personal know who to contact.
Add an ICE Contact – “In Case of Emergency”
Add an emergency contact in your phone named “ICE” which stands for “In Case of Emergency.”
The Name field should only say “ICE”. Don’t add the name of your emergency contact in the Name field. You can add the name of your emergency contact in the Company field.
In the Notes section, you can add other essential information such as your medical condition, allergies, medication, blood type, and anything else you believe emergency personnel should know while treating you. You can add any information someone needs to know in order to give you the appropriate care in case of an emergency.
However, if you lock your smart phone, emergency personnel will not have access to your contacts. There are 2 solutions to this problem:
- Download an app that allows access to information while your phone is locked; or
- Change your locked screen wallpaper to a picture with your ICE information.
Heath App on iPhone
If you own an iPhone, the Health App has a Medical ID feature that allows access to critical information while your iPhone is locked.
When you open the Health App, it will bring you to the Dashboard. Click on the Medical ID link on the bottom right hand side.
Then you can add the relevant information in the Medical ID screen, including your emergency contacts, medical conditions, allergies, medications, and other notes.
Make sure the Show When Locked is enabled so emergency personnel can access the information.
To reach the Medical ID information from a locked phone, the emergency personnel would click on “Emergency” from the locked screen, then on “Medical ID.”
Smart tip:
If you are having trouble adding a particular contact as an emergency contact in the Health App:
1. Double check that the emergency contact is added as a contact first before designating as an emergency contact.
2. If the contact is grayed out and is not available to be selected from the Health App, try editing the contact to unlink any social media accounts.
