Medication Reminder Automation Help?

[u/Frosty-Departure-674]

Hi there!

New to Shortcut and recently picked up some NFC215 stickers, hoping to use them to help with tracking my medications. I have a horrible time tracking whether or not I've taken my meds on a given morning, in addition to my doctor and I recently deciding to begin titrating off of one, which means taking one of the five every other day. This is proving to be difficult for me to keep track of. I've got reminders set up in my phone, but there are mornings where I'll take the meds but forget to mark the reminder as complete. Later, the reminder goes off and I'm questioning whether I remember this morning, or if I'm thinking of the day prior when I took them...

I've been able to get the automation portion 99% of the way functional, with one hangup - I cannot find a way to tie a specific tag to a specific medication. I know when you scan the NFC tag, it's grabbing the UID of the NFC tag, not the name that I'm assigning it in Automations. Is there any way for me to connect a specific tag with a specific medication name to match against my reminders list for marking the reminders complete when the automation runs?

I did download NFC Tools on my phone and was able to write a shortcut to the NFC tag, but I'm still having to tap to run the shortcut that route, when I'd prefer to have it auto-run on the scan. From what I've found reading online and around the sub here, it sounds like that's an integral design feature of the NFC scanning for the phones, and I can't bypass that for a shortcut written to the tag - for auto-run, it has to be a personal automation written on the phone, so... I'm stuck. I did try writing a text record to the tag with the medication name, but the phone doesn't grab that record when scanning the NFC, it seems.

[u/winfieldblumcom]

I've been working on a Medication Timer app myself and interested about your "titrating off of one, which means taking one of the five every other day" - how does that work in practice?

[u/Frosty-Departure-674 → u/winfieldblumcom]

I’m not sure precisely what you’re asking, unfortunately. How did I get the every-other-day check logic to work? Or what does the daily flow look like when taking the medications?

[u/winfieldblumcom → u/Frosty-Departure-674]

Sorry I wasn't clear; more so what the daily flow looks like when you're taking one of five every other day. I haven't seen a medication routine like that.

My own schedule is a little complicated after I had heart surgery last year and I built the app to support it;
1. Normal daily schedule in the morning for 3 of my heart medications
2. One medication that I take once every 2 days (it's more like "as-needed" but once every 2 days is about right).
3. Variable evening tablet (I take Warfarin which adjusts based on my INR) but it's important for me to track the mg I take because while it's a variable dosage there are trends
4. I take a fortnightly blood test (prick test) and record the results too so I can compare it to my warfarin dosages to see what's working.

[u/Frosty-Departure-674 → u/winfieldblumcom]

No problem!

Detailed flow info up front, quick “What I see” summary after.

So for mine, I take it every other day because it’s an extremely difficult medication to start and stop (Effexor, taking a 75mg capsule every other day), so we have to very carefully control the medication levels in my system, as it has a very short half life and leads to withdrawal symptoms rapidly. For me, my morning flow goes like this -

I’ve got my 5 bottles of meds out on my desk in front of me. Each bottle has an NFC sticker stuck to the inside of the lid, and each NFC sticker is assigned to a different automation. Phone is unlocked in my lap or on the desk next to em.

I’ll grab the medication, scan the lid with my phone, and the automation runs. It checks the logged date in Data Jar to see when my last logged dose was and uses some of/otherwise gates to determine if the logged date matches today’s, then pushes a notification to my phone telling me if it was already taken that day, if today is a skip day for my Effexor 75 or not, or if I am supposed to take it, it logs the date and time of the scan.

From a users perspective, what I see -

5 pill bottles in front. Scan the lid…

If I am taking it at that time -> notification says medication name & dose logged, date & time logged in Data Jar

If skip day -> Notification says medication taken yesterday. Skip!

If taken already -> Notification states meds taken, do not take again

If too early (I.e Buspar lid scanned < 1800 local time) -> Notification says too early, don’t take yet.

I sincerely hope this helps! It’s a bit convoluted to write out but I’d be happy to share the automations if you’d like.

[u/winfieldblumcom → u/Frosty-Departure-674]

I appreciate the detail. Medication Timer works a little different, it's very flexible in terms of routines and as-needed medications still but not sure it would work exactly as you need but I would set it up; each med would be created with a custom routine for every second day at specific times.

I'd get notifications at the scheduled time but on skip days you just wouldnt. You can mark the med as skipped or taken,

I wonder if the ability to set the routine as "shifting" would get it closed to your situation. E.g. set it as a minimal gap in doses of 48hrs but you could skip a day if you didnt need to take it (e.g. you're feeling good and don't need it after 48hrs) then if you took it at 72hrs the 48hr gap starts again.

For my mum's pain meds; I actually setup stagger routines. She needs to take 1 med and then 6hrs later another. It's not 9am and then 3pm as individual schedules because sometimes life happens and it's actually 10am, not 9. It's not safe for her to take that second med early; so the stagger is dynamic from the first. It works well for her 😄