Redesign for inhaler and nasal spray dose counts, with several sources

[orowith2os]

medTimer is currently more angled towards pill-like medications - the ones where you count how many pills you have and it counts down. This isn't ideal for medications like inhalers or nasal sprays that have a physical unit count, and then also puff or spray counts.

I propose adding medicine types, and tracking different counts depending on what type of medicine it is. This way, if I have several inhalers of one type of medication, I can know how much I have left.

This might also imply special handling if someone has several medication sources for the same type, and takes from different ones depending on circumstances. For example, I might have a rescue inhaler in my bag, and one on my nightstand, and would like to track puff counts for both of them simultaneously. This would mean more work in redesigning the application to take these into account, but would be worth it in the end.

[ChiefMikeK]

@Futsch1 I would also suggest a pulldown menu per cat/type ie.

• Pill/Tablet -- [x] full -- [x] half
• 💊 Capsule
• Spoon(s)/cap markings(child's) -- [x] small [Tea-spoon] -- [x] BIG [Table-spoon] -- [x] 1/4 mark -- [x] 1/2 mark
• 🤧 Nasal spray
• 😶‍🌫️Inhaler
• 🧫 Test (like blood sugar prior meal or insuline injection) -- 💉 № ___cc's
• 🩹 Patch
• Other⁉️ ⊂supositories💩⊃

And also a day prior Calender Reminder for

• My Next Scheduled Appointment(s)‼️
• No eating after time № of hours before blood/urine test?

[ChiefMikeK]

Forgot also allow As-Needed in quantity fields

[Futsch1]

Forgot also allow As-Needed in quantity fields

You can add any text you want in the "amount" field.

And it is possible to enter the actually taken amount for every dose by selecting Enter dosage when taken.

[Futsch1]

@orowith2os

Let me try to understand your issue with counting non pill-like medications: The stock tracking is currently all based on numbers. So if you enter a 50 as remaining stock, this would equally count as physical pills and as puffs remaining. If your dosing amount contains any number, this number will be subtracted from the remaining stock. So if your dosing amount says: 2 puffs, it would count down by two. It would be great if you could tell me a bit more why this would not work for you.

Regarding the different "packs" of the same medication: I would recommend creating different medicines from them with distinct stock tracking. With the latest update, Log additional dose will also update the stock. So you could have some medicines that you only trigger manually when taken (like those rescue inhaler you mentioned) and some other that are taken/used on a manual basis. I consider adding a dedicated app support for this use case very complex. So might this workaround be feasible?

@ChiefMikeK

I understand what you are asking for - basically a categorization per medicine. However, what I have not understood so far is the impact that this categorization could have in the app: What would actually change if a med is set to e.g. nasal spray? Where would it be displayed?

Regarding the appointment reminders: I will add this as a new feature request.

[just-Nob]

You can add any text you want in the "amount" field.

That's one topic that I tested a few days ago, shortly before this issue were opened - it works good, amazing! Even with fractions / partial numbers, and it looks like a dot ("0.5") is just AD valid as a comma ("0,5") - really nice.

Nevertheless, I think there are good arguments for having the unit of a medication's dose to be taken (i.e. pill, drops, spoon etc.) as a separate field in the "stock of medikation"(? - German: "Medikamentenvorrat") area:

1. The unit is usually bound to the kind of medication and won't change.
2. Yes, you can write the dose as you like in the reminder, but it you have multiple of them (e.g. breakfast time / lunch time / dinner time) you must add them to every one of them.
3. I guess most people neither have the idea to add the units to the reminder's "amount" field, nor they know about the syntax that they must use: Is it possible to add any string behind the amount? Is a string before the numeric value also possible? Are there invalid special characters that are forbidden?

If you agree, this may also be worth to be outsourced to a separate issue?

[Futsch1]

It actually is possible to add any string before or after the amount, the app will look for the first number in the string.

However, I agree that adding a unit field in the medication stock setting might be helpful - and would improve all reminder both for doses and stock. I will create a new feature request.

[just-Nob]

@orowith2os Let me try to understand your issue with counting non pill-like medications: The stock tracking is currently all based on numbers. So if you enter a 50 as remaining stock, this would equally count as physical pills and as puffs remaining. If your dosing amount contains any number, this number will be subtracted from the remaining stock. So if your dosing amount says: 2 puffs, it would count down by two. It would be great if you could tell me a bit more why this would not work for you.

Regarding the different "packs" of the same medication: I would recommend creating different medicines from them with distinct stock tracking. With the latest update, Log additional dose will also update the stock. So you could have some medicines that you only trigger manually when taken (like those rescue inhaler you mentioned) and some other that are taken/used on a manual basis. I consider adding a dedicated app support for this use case very complex. So might this workaround be feasible?

I'm also a little unsure about @orowith2os's intention.

• If this is for a "as needed" dose without a reminder, I agree with @Futsch1 that it should be sufficient to have two medications, e.g. "rescue inhaler" and "nightstand inhaler" and to choose the respective one, if taken.
• If, in the other hand, the "trick" here is to be able to have two (or maybe more) packs of the same medication which has also a limitation of the allowed doses per day - e.g. maximum of three puffs per day in case of @orowith2os -, then this might be different.

Anyway, in the end I can imagine scenarios where you have different "packs" of the same medication that you don't like to consume sequentially, but (some kind of) in parallel (e.g. due to different workplaces : home office, bureau #1, bureau #2). So, you may have one reminder (since you need your medication to take during lunch), but depending of you're current workplace, the respective pack, the amount of which must be decreased, differs depending on the current workplace. Now the following comes into play...:

@ChiefMikeK I understand what you are asking for - basically a categorization per medicine. However, what I have not understood so far is the impact that this categorization could have in the app: What would actually change if a med is set to e.g. nasal spray? Where would it be displayed?

In my opinion, the "stock of medikation"(? - German: "Medikamentenvorrat") area is the right place for that. It would need the following improvements (meaning also respective adaptations of the underlying data structure, which might be a little more difficult to implement):

• One new field "no. of active packs per medication" (or something similar - maybe to activate by a checkbox for >1).
• Since package size may differ (even in case of the same medication), all other parameters should be present once per "active pack" meaning the "simple" struct will turn into an array of struct.
• For sure, these structs now also need a "package identifier", maybe a string being used as a medication suffix.
• Last not least, for medications with active packs >1, there must be a user dialogue being opened offering a drop down menu with the active packs to choose from, each time a medication is taken.

[Futsch1]

While I fully understand the use case and the intention, I currently consider this rather an edge case and not a standard use case. For the time being I will work on other aspects of the app.

Still, I will keep this issue open and reconsider it some later time.

[just-Nob]

Hi Florian,

to be honest, I personally don't need this feature (I just always keep a small medicine box in my work bag with a dose of my most important medication in case I forget to take it in the rush of the morning), but if it is to be implemented, I would think this way would be useful.

[BlankEclair]

@ChiefMikeK wrote on 24 January 2025:

• Pill/Tablet -- [x] full -- [x] half

There's a missing category here: 1/4th of a pill (for example, I take a quarter of a 50 mg pill of cyproterone acetate, since no one sells 10 mg variants here).

However, I'm not sure how useful it is to denote full/half/quarter/(oh no what else) quantities in the category, especially since we can use decimals in the amount field.