Setting up Emergency Information to be Accessible from a Locked iPhone

In an emergency, providing critical health information to emergency healthcare professionals and/or first responders can make a big difference in a person's treatment and recovery. Unfortunately, if you are incapacitated, this information can be hard to relay. Implementing passcodes on smartphones is one small step towards protecting the security of your data, but preventing unauthorized access also keeps people with a legitimate need from accessing critical information. On an iPhone, however, there is a way to provide access to medical information without having a passcode or allowing  access to any other private information.

The Health app, which is available in iPhone's running iOS 9, provides a simple way to input emergency medical information that can be accessed from a locked home screen.

Setting up emergency information to be accessible from the lock screen

• Open the Health App.
  
  
  


• Click on the "Medical ID" icon in the bottom right corner in the menu bar.
• Select the "Create Medical ID" option.
  
  
  


• Verify the "Show When Locked" setting is enabled in the emergency access section.  
• Enter the appropriate information into the different available categories.
  
  
  


• When all the information has been added, click "Done" in the top right corner.
• A summary of the information entered is displayed in the Medical ID tab.
  
  
  

Accessing the information from a locked phone

• Click the Home button and slide to unlock the phone.
• At the passcode screen, click "Emergency" in the bottom left corner.
  
  
  


• At the Emergency Call screen click "Medical ID" in the lower left corner.
  
  
  


• The emergency medical information is displayed.
  
  
  

In our normal everyday lives It is easy to forget how quickly things can happen. Being somewhere alone, or with someone who is not aware of your medical information or history makes it hard to relay critical information to emergency medical personnel and first responders. If you have any health conditions or are allergic to any medications, providing quick access to this information can be extremely important. Setting up medical information in the Health app is both free and easy, and allows a summary of this information to be retrieved even if a device is locked.

To see how this is done, watch our video:

As always, use tech to make your life better, not more complicated! 

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