Keep track of all your medicines with our new tool

If you’re taking several medications, you know that keeping track of when and how to take them can be a juggling act. The more drugs you take, the more at risk you are for taking the wrong drug or one that you don’t need, or experiencing dangerous side effects from drug interactions.

Whether you’re concerned about your own safety, or you’re a caregiver for someone with a chronic illness, our new tool, My Medication Tracker, can help keep medications organized and prevent drug errors. With this new tool you can maintain a complete, up-to-date list of all the drugs you take—prescription and over the counter—including dosages, expiration dates, how much you paid for each medicine, directions on how to take your medicines, and the number of refills you have left. You can also record and store information about your allergies, vaccinations, the medical conditions you have, and your insurance coverage information.

My Medication Tracker is easy to use and lets you store a password-protected, electronic record of your medications on your home computer. Simply download the software onto your computer, set up a user name and password, and begin entering your medications by clicking on the "Add New" button.

Bottom line: My Medication Tracker can help you take control of your medication and health history, and will also improve your communication with your doctor. At your next doctor’s appointment, bring a printout of your medications and ask your doctor, “Do I really need to take all these medications?” It’s likely your doctor is unaware of all the medications you’re taking—especially if you’re seeing several doctors and specialists. Your doctor may even recommend you stop taking unnecessary or duplicate medications or dosages—which can not only help cut costs, but can also keep you healthy and prevent potential drug interactions. Also be sure to ask, “Does this drug interact with any other medicines or supplements I take?” Many drug combinations decrease the effectiveness of one or both medicines, while others increase the risk of adverse side effects.

—Ginger Skinner

My Medication Tracker was created by the Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs project with funding from The National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health. For more information on how to use My Medication Tracker* and for more on managing multiple medications, download our free Best Buy Drugs Money Saving guide*.

*links to PDF

Comments

[PC63]

A reminder to Consumer Reports that this program is not always used for people who reside in the United States. An example is when I try to enter my postal code it only allows the first 5 letters of the Postal Code (in Canada it is A0A 0A0).

In response to the comment from bytehead regarding not requiring start and end dates, I would disagree with that comment. I personal do like having the history available for medications/conditions. Also, I find it very important that username and password restrictions exist on the program, although my computer is not shared, for families who do share there computer medical history is still confidential and takes the worry out of entering information.

Now my suggestions:
- Ability to set default views for "Medical Conditions", "Allergies", "Immunizations", "Medications"
- Within the "Medications" Section, under the Form heading, set a standard
- Remove (or the option to remove) the "Symptom/Finding" section for medical diagnosis..

Thanks for the great program,

[Robert Maloney]

Please amend "My Medication Tracker" so it will work with Mac OS 10.6.1 (Snow Leopard).

[bytehead]

This is an interesting program. The interface needs a little work. You really don't need to put a dialog box to tell me that it saved the input, that would save a click, especially when you enter the number of drugs that I needed to enter (and that's the current list, not my complete history). I don't see the need to put WHEN I started something, because after a year, does it matter? Or just allow entering the month and year would be nice.

I find the requirements for user ID and password to be a bit extreme.

An Excel spreadsheet/template would do everything this does just as well in my opinion, and easier to make corrections and enter the information to begin with.

[Keith Constable]

I should also add that I think this is a great idea! Thanks, Consumers Union!

[Greg McDonald]

The Mac version of My Medication Tracker does not seem to work with Mac OS X v. 10.5.8.

[Keith Constable]

Your software developers should take note that the Mac OS X version of the application is only bundled in a tar file, which does not compress its contents. This makes the download unnecessarily large. It is generally best to distribute software in DMG or Zip files. If you're trying to stick with open source tools, however, feel free to run that tar file through gzip.

[denali]

Any love for Linux users?