Round Health is a handy medication reminder app that is designed to help users remember to take their pills. The app is simple to set up and does a nice job of unobtrusively reminding patients when to take their medications. Users can program in dosing for a fairly extensive list of prescription and over-the-counter medications, as well as supplements.
Medication entry is pretty straightforward. Patients start by typing in a drug name. A drop-down list populates as the user enters letters. One issue in the app is with misspelled drug names that are included in the list such as "metfomin" and "ibupfrofen." Over-the-counter meds are listed as vitamins, which is a little weird, but that doesn't affect the performance of the app.
After selecting the medication, users can choose the dose from a list, or enter a custom dose. The dosage list displayed depends on which formulation is chosen. If the patient can't find their dose, there is a useful option that allows input of a custom dose. This may be particularly helpful with medications like levothyroxine, where the dose may be listed on the patient's prescription bottle as 88 mcg or 0.088 mg.
Once the dose strength is entered, users can enter in the dosing schedule. There are some areas here that could be improved, like using more patient-friendly terminology.
An interesting feature is that you can set dosing windows rather than times. On the other hand, one downside is that doses taken multiple times daily must be set individually. It would be a nice addition if the user could just select twice daily or three times daily dosing when needed.
Patients can track when they've taken a medication as well as how many pills they have left (as long as they enter a starting number up front); the latter function then enables refill reminders.
Likes:
- Dose reminders via phone or smartwatch notifications
- Includes custom strengths if patient cannot find the correct dose of their pill
- OCP calendar for placebo and active pill dosing
Dislikes:
- Only available for Apple products
- Typos in drug names make the app feel less trustworthy
- Could be easier to add multiple daily doses (BID, TID, etc.)
Overall:
I was pleasantly surprised by the Round Health app. It would be worth recommending to patients with a couple of cautions included. Setting up dosing of medications and supplements is fairly easy, though that process could be improved with the addition of multiple daily doses. Another nice-to-have feature would be allowing the patient to set whether the medication needs to be taken on an empty stomach or with food. Overall, the app is pretty useful for patients but could use some cleaning up of typos and the addition of other helpful features.
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