Adding ICE (In case of Emergency) Contacts to your iPhone is very important. We are all so busy in life that we sometimes forget to think through our emergency preparedness. It is important that you save your ICE information on your iphone so that if there is an accident or emergency, the first responders would exactly know how to reach your loved ones and inform them. In this article, we will show you how to set up your Medical Id on your iPhone.
Apple offers support for ICE via its Medical Id feature. You can use Medical Id to make your important health information accessible in case of emergencies by setting up your Medical ID on your iPhone. You will be able to add emergency contacts and health information like your birth date, height, and blood type using this feature.
The feature around medical ID has been around on the iOS platform starting with iOS 8. In the older iOS, Although you were able to set up a medical id, your information would not have been made available to a first responder if you had protected your device via pass code.
In later iOS versions, Apple provided the choice to the users to easily share this information in the case of an emergency by by passing the pass code. In this article, we will show you how to set up this information on your iPhone as well as provide you with an overview of some of the other features that are available in this area.
Enhancements to Health App in iOS 9.3
With iOS 9.3, Apple made the following enhancements related to the Health App.
- Related third-party apps for select data types such as weight, workouts and sleep are displayed in the Health app
- Health dashboard adds support for move, exercise, and stand Activity data and goals from Apple Watch
- Easy access to Dashboard and Medical ID using 3D Touch Quick Actions from the Home screen
- Third-party apps now have access to Activity rings and summaries from Apple Watch through HealthKit
How to set up your Medical Id in iOS 9.3.1
Step – 1 Tap on the Health App on your iPhone home screen.
Step – 2 On this next screen, tap on “Create Medical Id”
Step – 3 On this next screen, you will be requested to fill your medical information such as existing medical conditions, Medical Notes around medications that you take, Any Allergies and Reactions that you have. Continue filling the other important details such as weight, height and blood type. You can also add your own photo by tapping on add photo on this screen.
Step – 4 Tap on Add Emergency Contact and choose your loved ones. You will need to choose the person’s phone number from your contact list and assign a relationship. You can add multiple emergency contacts.
Step – 5 This is an important step. The “Show When Locked” feature is the switch that allows you to provide access to your health information to a first responder when you choose to activate it. When you enable this option, the responder will not require a passcode to access your ICE information and other medical details that you set up on this device.
Step – 6 Tap on Done once you have completed.
Apple values personal security quite a bit. All the latest headlines around Apple vs FBI are a testament to it. That is one of the reasons that your Medical Id information that you set up is not shared with your health app data or with any other apps.
When the iphone is locked, the first responder can access the Medical Id information by waking up the iphone and tapping on Emergency. On the Emergency call screen, they can tap on the medical ID to show the information that you have made available by using this feature.
We think that this is a valuable feature. In the case of an emergency, it will allow someone to reach out to your loved ones. It also provided the first responders and the emergency centers to quickly access valuable information such as blood type and medicine related allergies with a quick tap on your iphone.
We are interested to know if you use this feature on your iPhone. If not, please let us know some of the reasons behind your reluctance in the comments below.