Helpful Caregiving Apps

Caring.com list of “Best Caregiving Apps of 2017”

You may find some of these apps helpful in caring for your loved one. For more information visit: https://www.caring.com/articles/best-caregiving-apps

CaringBridge is just that -- a bridge that allows you and your loved ones to stay in touch. It's a perfect app for a family that rallies around a loved one in need of care, and for those who are facing surgeries, rehabilitation, and procedures that go along with conditions such as cancer, heart disease or diabetes. The app offers a space for multiple caregivers and family members to share pertinent information, such as updates, encouragement, and arranging care. There's a guest book offering a place for journal entries, medical updates, photos, stories, and tributes. This is a wonderful addition to caregiver apps and unique in that it creates a place for more than managing a loved one's care -- you can uplift, stay in the loop and help each other through a difficult time.

Lotsa Helping Hands is a caregiving app that helps you create a community of care around your loved one. You can invite family, friends, volunteers, and care aides to join and then manage everything from sitters and errands to appointments and family gatherings using an interactive calendar. There's also a section of the app called "Helping Hands," which serves as a message board and a well-wishes wall where caregivers, family, and friends can leave messages of encouragement for the person receiving care or for someone else in the care circle. This app lets you choose a coordinator and a community member page where you can update contact information, birthdates, and list best times to call. These features make Lotsa Helping Hands a good resource for creating a vibrant care community.

The Caring Village app is designed specifically for family caregivers to help them easily coordinate and keep track of their loved one’s care. Caring Village CEO and Co-founder Mike Behrman says he was inspired to launch the app after he and his wife became caregivers for his mother-in-law, who has dementia. “We realized that the most important thing we needed to do was communicate effectively with other family members, her care professionals and neighbors,” he said in a news release. The app is meant to enable family caregivers to do just that via a secure messaging system where users can create "villages" among friends and relatives to help coordinate the specifics of a loved one’s care. Caring Village users can create customizable care plans for their loved ones plus personalized to-do lists. The app’s features also include a centralized calendar, document storage, a place to list medications and a wellness journal that allows you to share entries with the rest of your "village."

CareZone is another great, free care-based app. You can keep all of your loved one's pertinent information on the secured app and invite family and friends to view and participate in his or her care. It has a place for notes and observations, a task list, medication logging (including pharmacy numbers, dosing, prescribing physicians, etc.), a place to upload photos -- and you can even send a voice message to up to 100 recipients.

eCare21 provides round-the-clock patient monitoring through wireless and wearable devices (such as a smart watch, Bluetooth, or FitBit device. You can track the wearer's glucose, heart rate, activity, medication, weight, calorie intake and sleep. You, your loved one, other family members and doctors can access this useful information no matter where they live or work..  eCare will be most helpful for caregivers as they manage their loved one’s schedules and meet their health needs, but it may take several apps or websites to tackle more complex caregiving challenges such as pain management, medication interaction, financial and end-of-life issues.

Medisafe - Any caregiver knows the frustrations and concerns involved in medication management. You have to remember when the medication should be taken, whether or not to take it with food, avoiding double dosage, any side effects to watch out for, and make sure to track the medication for benefits or drawbacks. Medisafe Meds & Pill Reminder can help alleviate some of these concerns with reminders, helpful and practical information, and connecting caregivers, seniors, and the medical community together to provide cohesive care

Elder 411 is a different kind of app that doesn't focus on caregiver management. Its primary purpose is to offer caregivers more than 500 pieces of advice and elder care tips in 11 areas of care. You'll find hundreds of bite-sized tips in the areas of safety, housing, hiring caregiving help, adaptive equipment, communication, legal, mobility, letting go, and other key care issues, available right when you need them most. There's also a search area and a place for keeping notes.