There have been many campaigns over the years to encourage us to mark the names of our nearest and dearest in our mobile phone address books with the letters ICE. This stands for In Case of Emergency, and the idea is that if anything happens to you, the emergency services can contact your loved ones by being able to easily identify them in your contacts list. Now this is all very well, but what happens when your phone has a security lock to prevent unauthorised access? The most recent versions of iOS on the iPhone have very strongly encouraged the setting of a security PIN to protect your phone, which scuppers any benefit of having ICE contacts in your address book. But with the release of iOS version 8, Apple have provided a solution for that. You can enter emergency medical information via the Health app which is then accessible from your lock screen without having to input the PIN.
Given that I’ve only just found out how to do this myself I thought I would share a handy step by step guide in case anyone else hasn’t found this useful feature yet.
Step 1: Open the Health app on your iPhone
Step 2: Tap the “Medical ID” option in the bottom right corner
Step 3: You’ll get this screen. Tap “Create Medical ID”
Step 4: You’ll now be presented with a black medical ID form. The first thing to do is to make sure that the “Show When Locked” option is enabled. This will make all the information you enter on your Medical ID Form available from the “Emergency” section of your iPhone lock screen (accessible without entering a passcode)
Step 5: Now fill out as many details as you wish in the Medical ID form. I’d recommend adding at least one emergency contact, and any other pertinent information
Step 6: When you add a contact you can select their relationship to you from a list which should cover most possibilities:
Step 7: When you’ve added as many details as you wish, tap “Done” at the top right hand side of the screen and you are all finished.
Now your medical ID can be accessed via the “Emergency” option on your iPhone’s lock screen:
Tapping the “Medical ID” option at the bottom left hand side of the screen brings up your medical ID, and allows someone who doesn’t know your passcode to call your emergency contacts, should they need to (phone numbers blanked out to protect the innocent in my screenshot, on the normal screen the numbers are visible):
This is so handy to know. What great information x
Kim Carberry recently posted..Our Weekly Meal Plan!! – #mealplanningmonday
Brilliant information I shall be ensuring my husband does this to his phone asap!
Now to find an android version 😉
Thank you x
Apparently there are a few apps you can get for Android that do the same thing. I’ve found one called “Medical ID” which is free and seems to do the same kind of thing. Might be worth trying.
Thanks so much for sharing this, I’ve always used a homemade wallpaper with all this info on, but this is a far more elegant solution
Em @ snowingindoors recently posted..Summer Bucket List 2015
I never thought of using a wallpaper with this information – I think that’s pretty smart. This way means the information is a little less public though 🙂
Done! Fab tip, thanks Ruth 🙂 x
Jax2000 Mummy’s Little Monkey recently posted..BLOW YOUR OWN BLOG-HORN (17 july blog hop)
What are the options for non iPhone 8 owners – I have a iPhone 5c. The health app isn’t available on the iPhone store.
Hi Jill. The version 8 of the iPhone operating system will run on an iPhone 5c, so I think you may need to update your phone software. You can do this through the Settings / General / Software Update. I strongly recommend you connect it to the iTunes software on your computer to take a backup before applying any software update. Once your phone has the latest version of iOS you will find the Health app will have appeared. Hope this helps!
Thanks Geekmummy, will check what version s/w I gave on my phone. I thought I was up to date; maybe I deleted that app
I know this is for Apple, does anyone know of you can do this on an android phone Htc or Samsung?
I don’t know Android very well, but I understand that some Samsung phones have similar functionality – if you add contacts to the “emergency contact – ICE” group on the phone you can then assign them to buttons on your emergency dial screen. For other phones there are apparently several apps in the Google Play store that will give this functionality – I’ve had a free one called “Medical ID” recommended to me, but I have no personal experience of it.
I opened the Health app and added my info and when finished pressed “done” . When I push my emergency button the *medical does not show up on the left side corner to open the info?! What do I need to to or what didn’t I do? Thx
Hi Becky. My guess would be that you’ve missed out switching on the “Show When Locked” setting in the Medical ID bit of the Health app. See Step 4 above.