Pharmacy Cabinet

The best way to keep track of medicines at home: notebook, spreadsheet, alarm or an app?

Almost every home tracks its medicines somehow: a note on the fridge, a phone alarm, or just memory. All of these work for a while. The question is which one still works when there are six boxes, three people and one of them has expired.

Four ways to do it, and what each is good for

  1. 1A paper list or a notes app: free and instant, nothing to learn. Good for a home with two or three medicines. It will not warn you about expiry dates, and it is easy to forget to update.
  2. 2A spreadsheet: good if you like building your own system and sorting columns. Every box has to be typed in by hand, and nothing reminds you when something expires.
  3. 3A phone alarm or a general reminder app: good for one job, remembering to take a dose. It does not know what is in your cabinet, so it cannot tell you what is about to expire or what you already have.
  4. 4A medicine cabinet app: good when several medicines and several people are involved. The whole cabinet is in one place, with expiry dates, reminders and who each medicine is for. The trade-off: you add each medicine once.

In short

A notebook is a perfectly good start for two or three medicines. Once several people share the cabinet, or there are more boxes than you can remember, an app that warns you about expiry dates and lets the family see the same list saves time. Dates matter: according to the US FDA, a tablet can look fine after its date and still contain less of the medicine than it should.

Where Pharmacy Cabinet fits

  • Scan the barcode, capture the box with your camera, or upload a photo from your gallery, and the details fill in for you.
  • Expiry alerts show what is expired or about to expire as soon as you open the app.
  • Invite family into one cabinet, so everyone sees the same up-to-date list.
  • Add the room, cabinet or shelf, so you always know where a medicine is.
  • Works in your browser and as an Android app, in English, Spanish, French, German, Norwegian and Arabic. You can start free.
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Photograph or scan a box and Pharmacy Cabinet fills in the details for you.

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Pharmacy Cabinet helps you keep information organized. It is not medical advice: always follow your pharmacist's or doctor's instructions.

Pharmacy Cabinet: your family's smart medicine cabinet. Scan a box or barcode, track expiry dates, set reminders and share with your family.

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