Are you terrible at remembering when to take your medications, even when you have an alarm set to remind you?

Well you’re not alone, there are plenty of us from the Chronic health communities who have problems with this. I have tried alarms and even had people tell me to take them… that works unless they forget! and alarms go off to alert you, but they don’t physically get you to take the medication.

A little while ago I stumbled across this app by DrugStars and promised myself that I would give it a go, so recently I did.

It is really simple to set up your profile and to enter your medications for the DrugStar reminder. Once you have inputted your medications it is then equally as easy to set your reminders. When your medications are due the reminder ‘pings’ through on your phone like any other app notification does and you click to follow it. You click to say that you’ve taken your medications receiving one star for each one that you take. Gather 50 stars and then you’re eligible to donate to one one of the charities that are listed.

The attractive thing for me about this app is the fact that I can donate to charities just for taking my medications. Okay, I hear you asking what kind of incentive is that? Well a good one if credible, and legitimate, charitable causes, that are unfunded, are receiving a little help… at no cost to you!

You see, for me I live life thinking that one day I might need such a service as one of those charities, or someone I know might, so it is sometimes investing in the possible future. Regardless of that, being an unfunded Patient – Led Advocacy Organisation I truly understand how much initiatives such as this one by DrugStars are extremely valuable.

Like anything there are often flaws and the same does apply to this app the first one being that like any other reminder app it doesn’t physically put the medications into your systems. The second is that it doesn’t matter if you forget because the stars seem to just mount up so you get them anyways! This makes the incentive pointless in part, however if it was so much of a bad thing I wouldn’t still be using it, or sharing it with you… my readers. In some respect if you log into your app and you have a mound of stars then you’ve obviously not been taking your medications so that should jolt you into trying to improve your medication adherence.

There are other ways to collect DrugStars too such as by reviewing your medications and helping to provide valuable feedback about them that could ultimately go on to help improve them. I mean how often do we whinge about medications not being efficient or have nasty or inconvenient side-effects. To me this is an excellent way to be involved in research without it costing you anything, or taking up too much of your time. You don’t have massive forms to fill in, or need to leave the house to take part so despite those few flaws this app has a lot of positives about it, especially if you’re interested in participating in research and helping non-profits and charitable causes while taking you’re medications… hopefully on time. 🙂

What do you think? will you take a look at it and register? If you do you will be given 10 DrugStars to start you off..

FibroFlutters are not in affiliation with DrugStars and I have written this review completely as an independent writer.