The card on the lock screen
Put your conditions, your medication and the people to call on the outside of a locked phone, where a responder can find them without your passcode.
Most phones can carry a card that shows without being unlocked: your name, your date of birth, the conditions you have, the medication you take, what you are allergic to, and the people to call.
Many paramedics know to check for it, though not all will and it varies by where you are and who arrives — so think of it as a good chance rather than a certainty. Where the phone offers it, it is reached from the word Emergency on the locked screen, and it shows that one card and nothing else. Your photographs, messages, banking and email stay locked, exactly as before.
The feature itself is not on every phone. An iPhone calls it Medical ID and has had it for years. On Android it is usually under Safety and emergency, but what it is called and whether it shows on the lock screen depends on who made the phone and how new it is. If you cannot find it, that is the phone, not you — and an In Case of Emergency card in your wallet does the same job on any of them.
It takes about five minutes to fill in and it is the single most useful thing in this course for anybody who lives alone or goes out walking.
Key points
- Fill in a medical card with conditions, medication and allergies
- Set it to be readable from a locked phone, where a crew will look
- Add emergency contacts with their relationship written beside them
- Explain to anybody who asks that the rest of the phone stays locked
What to remember
- The card lives in the Health app on an iPhone, and under Safety and emergency on an Android.
- An emergency contact is a person from your contacts, marked so a stranger knows who to ring first.
- The card is a deliberate exception to the lock, and the only one. Everything else stays shut.
Try this
Do this one for real tonight, on your own phone, and then ask somebody to press Emergency on your lock screen to check that they can see the card. It is five minutes, and it is the most useful five minutes in this course.
Practice: The card on the lock screen. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.