Episode 15 — Your parents' medicines from another country: from "I think" to "I can see"

Ten o'clock at night in Amsterdam. Ten o'clock at night in Poland. The same hour, two countries.

Magda rings her mum with the question she asks every few days.

Mum, aren't you running low on the heart one? And her mum says she thinks she's still got some.

And that, she thinks, is the whole story. Because Magda can't look in the drawer. She can't count the tablets in the strip. She can't check whether the heart medicine's running out. Between her and her mum's cabinet, there's a thousand kilometres, and one, I think.

Hello, I'm Thomas Schuster. I built the Moyab-Tetchka app. And what Isa's just described, Magda's story from Amsterdam, is our subject today.

What do you do when your parents have stayed back home, and you live abroad, and you actually want to know how they're getting on with their medicines?

And I'll tell you, it got to me more than I expected. Because picture my mum, Irena, and my dad, Christoph, on their own back home. And me, suddenly in another country. I'd be ringing ten times a day.

You would. And you'd still only have what they tell you down the phone.

Exactly. So lay it out for me. What gets harder when the border's between you for good? Because it's not the same as looking after someone in the next town, surely?

It's not the same. Three things change at once. First, you can't look in the drawer. You can't count the packs. You can't see the date on the box. You can't spot that an antibiotic's been sat open for six months.

So you're left with the phone and photos.

The phone and photos. And both are unreliable. Because both depend on somebody happening to remember.

All right. That's one. And the second?

The second is a trap that's typical of families split by a border. The same medicine has different brand names in different countries.

Your mum says, I take the pink one for my blood pressure. You try to line that up with what you know from your own chemists.

And the name leads nowhere.

That's exactly what I'd be afraid of. Because I wouldn't know if mum's pink one is the same as what I'd buy round the corner.

And the third? A different pharmacy system. A different doctor. A different time zone.

The prescription's in one country's system. The doctor sees patients there. The pharmacy keeps that country's hours.

And you're on a completely different rhythm of the day.

Well, that sounds like something you can't get a handle on from another country.

There's one thing you can get a handle on. And everything starts from it. A shared cabinet in the cloud.

Instead of two half pictures. Yours from what you're told on the phone. Your mum's from memory.

There's one list you both see.

Meaning what exactly do I see?

The names of the medicines. The number of packs. The expiry dates. And who each medicine's assigned to.

Your mum adds a medicine at her end. You see it at yours once it syncs.

No more, check what I sent you in that message.

There's one last synced state, visible to everyone who's allowed in.

So what mum saves in the app back home, I see at my end in Amsterdam once it syncs.

Exactly that. And it eases that first problem. You don't have to rely only on what mum tells you on the phone or on the odd photo.

You've got a saved list you both look at.

Alright, but here's the question everyone would ask. Does it cost anything?

And it's good you ask it straight out, because I'll answer straight out too. The free plan handles one cabinet, one member, up to 20 medicines.

It's great for trying out the scamming and getting your own medicines in order. But for running a shared cabinet between the two of you, it won't be enough.

So I pay for the sharing?

Yes. Sharing starts with the standard plan, up to five people, and the pro plan goes up to 10, meant squarely for someone keeping an eye on the medicines of several people they love.

You'll find the current prices in the app store. I'm saying it plainly, so nobody assumes that sharing a cabinet across a border works for free.

I appreciate that it isn't tucked away in the small print. So let's go back to those different names, because that's the bit that nags at me most.

Will the app translate the Polish name into what I'd buy at my local chemists?

No. And here I've got to be very precise, because it's easy to promise too much.

The app won't turn APAP into its equivalent in Germany or Ireland, and it won't tell you what the medicines called abroad.

There's no such feature, and I'm not going to pretend there is.

So how does it help then?

In something surer than the name, the app shows you the active substance.

And the active substance is, in practice, the common language when you're talking to a doctor or a pharmacist.

Paracetamol is paracetamol, whether the box in Poland has one brand on it and the one in Ireland another.

So instead of the pink one for blood pressure…

You've got the specific active substance, and whatever's been saved from the box.

And when your mum's doctor back home, or your pharmacist where you are, asks, what does she take?

You're not giving them a brand name they might not know.

You give them the active substance.

That's information that crosses the border without any translating.

And where does the app get that substance from?

Am I typing it in by hand?

Usually not.

You take a photo of the box, and the scan reads the name, the active substance, and the expiry date, and they go onto the list.

But there's one honest caveat here.

The recognising and the matching are based on an official medicines register.

So for a medicine bought in another country, the match against the register might not come off, and you'd have to check the details and fix them by hand.

So a foreign box might not match?

It might not.

And then the surest thing is the active substance, copied straight off the box, by hand.

It's one line, and it's the line that tells you the most.

Right. A practical question from real life.

I'm sat on the metro in Amsterdam. No signal.

I open the app, and what? It's blank?

No, not blank.

You've got the last synced list to hand, even with no signal.

You'll see what was there at the last connection.

But if mum added something this morning and I had no signal…

Then to see that new thing, the phone has to connect just once.

With no connection, you're seeing yesterday's picture, not today's.

I'm not going to pretend the list updates out of thin air.

OK, that does sound honest.

Most apps would promise you you've always got everything.

And always everything is simply not true.

I'd rather tell you how it is.

Then tell me about the dates, because that's probably the hardest thing at a distance – expiry dates.

The hardest.

Because in the same city, one glance in the cupboard sorts it.

On the list, each medicine has an expiry status colour.

You can see straight off what's fine, what's near its date, and what's past it.

You open the cabinet from another country,

and you can see straight away whether your mum's heart medicine is showing red.

So I don't have to ask her, please check the dates on all the boxes?

You don't.

And that's a chore, especially for an older person with poorer eyesight.

Instead, you say…

Mum, these drops have got two weeks left on them.

I'll put them on the shopping list.

And this shopping list, does it write itself?

You set a threshold on a medicine, the smallest number of packs.

When the recorded stock drops below that minimum,

the medicine goes onto the restock list.

To restock.

You know a parent's running low on a regular medicine well before the last pack,

and not at the last minute on a Sunday evening with the chemists shut.

And this list is shared too.

Shared.

So there's no, I thought you were going to buy it.

Everyone who's allowed in sees the same gaps.

So tell me, finally, how you even start.

Because this sounds like something you'd have to set up together.

And this is the hardest moment.

The start.

After that, it's just glancing at a list.

First, set up one shared cabinet and invite each other in.

The parent can run it and you join, or the other way round.

The point is that from the off, there's one list, not two.

Second, add the regular medicines, most easily by photographing them.

For a medicine bought abroad, fix the details by hand after the photo, copying across the active substance.

Third, set thresholds on the ones taken every day.

And have a look through the ones colour marked as near expiry or past it,

to clear out what's already out of date.

And the last step?

Agree who's responsible for what.

Who buys back home?

Who keeps an eye on a list from abroad?

Who talks to the parent's doctor?

The app gives you a shared picture.

Who does what is down to you.

A few steps, one afternoon.

One afternoon.

And one more thing.

When it's the parent going to their own doctor, and you're not there with them,

they can show the list of medicines without dictating a thing from memory.

The other person opens a link or scans a code and sees the shared list, with no logging in.

But let's be clear about what the app doesn't do.

Because at a distance, it's tempting to hand it more than it can carry.

It is tempting, and that's exactly why I say it plainly.

It doesn't translate names between countries.

It doesn't replace the parent's doctor or pharmacist.

Decisions about treatment, what to take, in what amount, what to stop,

belong to the specialist who knows your parent.

The app is a layer of memory and order, not a system for making medical decisions.

The greater the distance, the easier it is to forget that.

The easier it is.

The app puts the facts in order.

Assessment and treatment, that's for a doctor or a pharmacist.

So let's come back to Magda at the end.

Let's.

Nothing we've said will let Magda look into the drawer back home from Amsterdam.

But a shared list, the colour of the dates, and the active substance instead of an unfamiliar brand,

turn her,

I think mum's still got some, into,

I can see on the list how much is left.

And that's the whole difference between worrying at a distance and calm, practical support.

If you'd like to give it a go, that's the Moya Pteczka app.

The app is free, and after that first sync, it works offline too.

You'll find the link in the episode description.

The simplest way to start is with the free plan.

Put a few of your own medicines in order,

and see whether a system like this suits you.

And if you enjoyed the episode,

share it with someone who's minding parents from another country.

One more thing before we go.

This podcast is made with the help of artificial intelligence.

I wrote the dialogue myself,

but the voices you're hearing aren't ours.

They're AI-generated, synthetic voices.

We're telling you this straight out,

because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way.

Full details are in the show notes and in every episode description.

Until next time.

Until next time.