10:19

S01:E21 Aug 26, 2026

Episode 21 — The doctor asked for one thing. I built something else

A doctor suggested something simple: that the owner of the medicine cabinet should be able to flag a medicine they’re allergic to. One field, you tick it, and that’s that. It sounds sensible — and that is exactly how it would have been built, were it not for one question asked a day later: what happens when a DIFFERENT box turns up in the cabinet? Because an allergy is to the active substance, not to one brand’s packaging. A flag placed on a single pack would stay silent when, a month later, you buy a medicine from another company with the same substance inside — precisely when the warning was needed most. That’s worse than not having the feature, because it gives you a false sense that somebody is keeping an eye out. This episode is about how a specialist’s request was translated into something other than what it sounded like — and about what the feature still does NOT do. What we cover: From the pack to the substance, and then to the person. A medicine cabinet at home doesn’t belong to one person. A warning has to know who it’s about, otherwise it’s noise. That dimension wasn’t in the original request at all — because a doctor is thinking about the patient across the desk, not about a drawer that five people use. Three deliberate limitations of the current version, said out loud: No cross-reactivity. If you enter an allergy to one substance, the app won’t automatically warn you about another, related one — unless you enter that one separately as well. Drug classes are clinical knowledge, and here a conversation with the pharmacist has no substitute. The matching is heuristic. With an unusual spelling the warning might not appear, and sometimes it might appear when it needn’t. Warn, never block. You can see the warning and hand the medicine out anyway. That’s deliberate: an app that blocks is making a medical decision on a person’s behalf. A warning says “check this”. A block says “you mustn’t”. Only one of those is an app’s to say. A bug that actually happened. With a feature that works per person, the most dangerous class of mistake is leakage between people — one person’s allergy shown against another person’s medicine. Sly, because the app still looks as though it’s working. An adverse reaction is not the same as a medication mix-up. There’s an official route for reporting adverse reactions, and it works. But a mix-up — taking the wrong medicine, a double dose because two people both gave it — is a different category. Here the medicine did exactly what it was supposed to; it just went to the wrong place. What couldn’t be found. A public, systematic picture of what goes on at the drawer at home. You could take a statistic from another country and multiply it by the population — it would look convincing on a slide and it would be made up. A different health system, a different way of counting, different habits. The ask in this episode isn’t “download the app”. It’s: let’s count it. Anyone. If only so it turns out the problem is smaller than it seems. What the app does NOT do: it doesn’t diagnose, it doesn’t set doses, it doesn’t judge whether a medicine is right for you, and it doesn’t tell you to take or skip anything. Its job is to make sure you know what you’ve got at home and what to ask about. The answer belongs to the pharmacist. Links: mojApteczka: mojapteczka.pl — the app is free, and your medicine cabinet is there offline too In this episode: allergies per person and per active substance, warnings on medicines, the report for your doctor Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. Full details are in the show description and in the episode outro. We say so plainly, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way.

12:29

S01:E20 Aug 26, 2026

Episode 20 — The cheapest new market isn't a country

You hear “international expansion” and you picture a founder leaning over a map of Europe, picking a country. Tomasz pictured it that way too — until he sat down and did the sums. What came out was not what he expected: the cheapest new market for mojApteczka isn’t a country at all. An important caveat up front: these are plans and analyses, not a shipped state. The episode announces entry into no market whatsoever. What is actually shipped: four interface languages (Polish, English, Ukrainian, Russian), work with the Polish medicines database, and the English version of this podcast on its own channel. Everything else is a spreadsheet with numbers in it. What we cover: A new market is the same people, just somewhere else. Around 984,000 Poles live in the UK. Ireland — 93,000 citizens, but 124,000 people there speak Polish. The Netherlands 128,000, Norway 80,000, Sweden with Denmark and Iceland 170,000. Together with nearly a million Ukrainians living in Poland, that comes to roughly 2.5 million people — without translating a single line of text. Why no translation is needed. Because those people also buy medicines in Polish pharmacies, and carry them home in a suitcase after visiting their parents. The Polish medicines register is still “their” database. You don’t need an integration with a foreign health service for the app to make sense to them. Five variables, not one. “Ease of entry” broken into: interface language, medicines database, legal regime, availability of pharmacy data, and competition. A market is cheap when you land on “cheap” in at least three of the five. Write it out, and intuition stops working. The Czech Republic costs more than it looks. The seemingly obvious neighbour: close by, similar language. But the similarity of the language is an illusion — a Czech won’t install an app that’s in Polish, so a full translation is needed. On top of that, the medicines data there isn’t open. Estimate: 40,000–60,000 euros. Germany is not an empty market. The leader across Germany, Austria and Switzerland is MyTherapy, out of Munich. There’s also an app called, literally, “digital home medicine cabinet”. Alongside them runs the state’s e-prescription infrastructure. Turning up with the message “we’ve got a medicine cabinet on your phone” will surprise nobody there. Estonia as the first real country. 1.3 million inhabitants is the only minus. Russian covers roughly one person in five, English is widely used, health data is open and well organised. Entry estimate: 15,000–25,000 euros — less than the Czech Republic on its own. The takeaway. Being close on the map has nothing to do with the cost of entry. A small country with open data can be cheaper than a big country without it. And the most valuable thing this analysis produced wasn’t a list of countries — it was an order in which each step pays for the next. Links: mojApteczka: mojapteczka.pl — the app is free, and your medicine cabinet is there offline too Polish version of this podcast: “mojApteczka. Solo.” Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. Full details are in the show description and in the episode outro. We say so plainly, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way.

13:29

S01:E19 Aug 26, 2026

Episode 19 — Who's responsible when the AI gets it wrong

Iza is standing over the medicine drawer one evening, photographing a box with her phone. And halfway through she catches herself on a thought worth having about every app with artificial intelligence inside it: how do I actually know that whatever comes up on that screen is true? This episode isn’t about whether AI makes mistakes. It does. It’s about what happens AFTERWARDS — who gets the last word, where responsibility sits, and how to spot an app that tells you honestly what it doesn’t know. The most important sentence in the episode is built into the app itself: mojApteczka is not a medical device within the meaning of Regulation MDR 2017/745. That isn’t legal cover pasted into the terms and conditions — it’s a design choice with consequences, and those consequences are what we talk about. What we cover: Three steps in a scan, and the first one matters least. A model looks at the photo and recognises the shapes of letters. It’s the medicines register that says what the medicine actually is. And the third step is a person: the result lands on a screen to check and correct, and until you tap save, there’s nothing in your cabinet. The app can’t create a medicine that isn’t in the register. If the model invents something, there’s nowhere to put it. It sounds dull. It’s the foundation the whole thing sits on. What the interaction database knows, and what it can’t. More than three hundred thousand documented interactions; over one point three million entries once each pair is recorded in both directions. It describes a possible interaction between two substances and how severe it might be. It doesn’t know your age, what you’re being treated for, or whether your GP decided quite deliberately that the combination is fine in your case. It’s a list of questions for the pharmacist, not a verdict. 61% of products carry low confidence in the data. Product characteristics are written very cautiously — quite rightly. We talk about what to do honestly with information you aren’t sure of yourself, and why those markings are muted rather than turned up. Why the warning got shorter. The same block of text on every one of eight medicine cards stops being read. One sentence stays visible; the full source list sits one tap away behind an icon. Safety markings are OFF by default. We say plainly why — and admit we don’t know whether that’s the final answer. Prescription scanning works differently from scanning a box. All the reading happens on the phone. The photo never goes anywhere. Only the medicine name goes to the lookup — exactly as if you’d typed it in yourself. Where the data comes from. Next to the safety information, the sources are named: the Summary of Product Characteristics, LactMed (NIH), OpenFDA and the European Medicines Agency. For interactions, a specific scientific database with its year of publication: DDInter 2.0 (Nucleic Acids Research, 2025). “Our algorithm detected” is a sentence that means nothing. What the app does NOT do: it doesn’t diagnose, it doesn’t treat, it doesn’t judge whether a medicine is right for you, it doesn’t set doses and it doesn’t tell you to take or skip anything. That verdict belongs to your GP and your pharmacist. The app’s job is to make sure you know what you’ve got at home and what to ask about. One line to take away: artificial intelligence can suggest, but it can’t decide. Don’t ask whether an app has AI in it. Ask what happens when that AI gets it wrong. Links: mojApteczka: mojapteczka.pl — the app is free, and your medicine cabinet is there offline too Public interaction checker: mojapteczka.pl/interakcje-sprawdz In this episode: package scanning, on-device prescription scanning, drug interactions, safety data sources Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. Full details are in the show description and in the episode outro. We say so plainly, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way.

12:29

S01:E18 Jul 13, 2026

Episode 18 — The small print: when you simply can't read the leaflet

Iza’s mum is sitting in the kitchen under the lamp. A magnifying glass, a second pair of glasses on over the first, a leaflet folded up like a concertina. After a moment she puts the paper down and says: right, I’ll take it the way I always have. This isn’t a story about her not understanding something. It’s a story about her physically not being able to see it. A barrier of eyesight, not a barrier of knowledge — and that’s a completely different problem, with completely different answers. This episode is about four routes to the same content when the print is too small: a magnifier, the file from an official register, the phone’s built-in screen reading, and the pharmacist. We’re straight about each one, including where it runs out. The most important caveat, right at the top: mojApteczka does NOT read the patient leaflet aloud. The leaflet it only opens, as a link to the official register. What it reads aloud is the Summary of Product Characteristics — a different, official document about the same medicine, written for doctors and pharmacists, not for the patient. That’s a harder text, and we don’t pretend that hearing it read out makes it any simpler. We say so plainly in the episode, because keeping quiet about it would be dishonest. What we talk about: A phone reads text, not paper. Which is why “take a photo of the leaflet, the phone will read it” usually fails. Newer phones do recognise text in a photo — good enough for a receipt. Across three pages of dense print in two columns, the recognition loses chunks and glues the columns together. The same leaflet as a file. The leaflet is also published as a document you can download. Same content, different medium: a file you can enlarge without it going blurry, and if there’s real text inside it, the phone can read it aloud. How to tell text from a scan — a simple search test. The TalkBack trap. It isn’t “reading text out”, it’s a full screen reader for people who can’t see the screen at all. Switch it on and the whole way you use the phone changes. If you can see the print and it’s simply too small, you’re looking for something else. The pharmacist. The only route where somebody will not just read it, but EXPLAIN it. No app does that. What the app does. On the medicine’s documentation screen there’s a speaker button: the phone reads the name of the medicine and then the sections of the Summary — there are nine. The voice comes from the speech engine in the phone, nothing goes off to the network; the documentation has to sync once. A section can be translated on the device (English, Ukrainian, Russian), and the voice switches to the language you can see on the screen. It works on the free plan. What the app does NOT do: it doesn’t read the patient leaflet, it doesn’t summarise or simplify (it reads the official text word for word), it doesn’t advise, it won’t judge whether a medicine is right for you, and it won’t pick a dose. That’s what your GP and your pharmacist are for. We’re also open in the episode about what we haven’t tested: the whole path with a blind user. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline (after a first sync) In this episode: reading the medicine documentation aloud, the nine sections of the Summary of Product Characteristics, translating a section on the device, the phone’s accessibility settings Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

6:13

S01:E14 Jul 13, 2026

Episode 14 — A medicine in plain terms: how do you know what it actually is

You go to the chemist’s for some Panadol. They’re out, so the pharmacist hands you something else — “same active substance”, they say. You get home, look at the box, and it’s a completely different name. And you stand there like a lemon: how are you meant to know if it really is the same? This episode is about knowing what a medicine actually is — its active substance, and the official information about it — without the app ever pretending to be a doctor. From the organisation side, not the treatment side. Straight off, honestly: this isn’t an episode about what to take or how much. It’s about reading what a medicine is, and finding the official facts about it. Any decision to swap, take or stop something is for your GP or your pharmacist. Where the app helps (and where it deliberately doesn’t): The active substance under the brand name — open a medicine and, beneath the brand, you see the active substance. Panadol’s is paracetamol; look at a second box, and if its active substance is paracetamol too, then you know that much is the same. That’s still not a decision to swap them, or about how to take it — for that you ask the pharmacist or your GP. Extracts of the Summary of Product Characteristics, in the app — sections like indications, storage, contraindications and side effects, shown right there. Even the dosing you see is an extract of that official document, not advice from the app. The leaflet and the full document via a link — for the patient information leaflet and the full characteristics, you follow a link through to the official file. A disclaimer on every one of those screens — it says, in so many words: this is for information only, it’s not medical advice, consult your doctor or pharmacist. The app shows the official information; it doesn’t interpret it or judge whether a medicine is right for you. On-device translation of the extract — Polish, English, Ukrainian, Russian. The translation happens on the phone itself, and it translates the extract you’re reading, not the whole database at once. A “Medication database” you can search offline — type a name, say Panadol, and see the active substance, the dose and the form. Around seventy thousand medicines, working without a connection once you’ve synced the first time. You don’t have to scan anything just to look something up. Where the data comes from — the medicine data and the full documents come from an official medicines register, a public, official source. The app doesn’t invent anything; it organises it and shows it in one place. The point: “a medicine in plain terms” doesn’t mean the app tells you what to do. It means you know what the substance is, you’ve got the official information to hand instead of a random forum, you can translate it — and for advice you still go to a person. The app shortens the path to the official source; it doesn’t replace the conversation with your GP or pharmacist. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline In this episode: the active substance on the medicine card, extracts of the Summary of Product Characteristics, the leaflet-and-document links, on-device translation, the “Medication database” Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

11:13

S01:E17 Jul 13, 2026

Episode 17 — Medicines in the heat: how to store them in summer

You’re back from the beach, the car sat in the car park since morning. You open the glovebox and there’s the paracetamol you chucked in a month ago, just in case. The box is warm, the blister’s a bit soft. And you stand there holding it, thinking: after a day like that in the car, can you still rely on the expiry date? This episode is about storing medicines in summer heat — from the organisation side, not the treatment side. Straight off, honestly: this isn’t an episode about what to take or how much. It’s about keeping a cabinet in order when it’s hot, and knowing when the honest answer is simply “set that pack aside and ask at the pharmacy”. Whether a particular medicine is still safe after overheating is for the pharmacist or your GP. Where the app helps (and where it deliberately doesn’t): The “Storage” section on the medicine card — taken from the leaflet, right there with the medicine, so you don’t have to search the internet for how a particular one should be kept. Most medicines like somewhere cool, dry and dark, unless the leaflet says otherwise. Colour-coded expiry alerts — red, amber and green, describing the date status (expired or very close / coming up / still a good way off), not a medical verdict on the medicine. Handy for a quick review of a place like the allotment, where medicines can sit since last summer. A note per medicine — add something like “keep in the fridge” or “went to the allotment”, so where a medicine lives is written down once instead of guessed at. Group medicines by how they sit at home — the fridge ones separately, the cupboard ones separately, so it’s quicker to compare what’s in the app with what’s actually on the shelf. A shared cabinet view — for keeping an eye on more than your own cabinet. That’s a topic for its own episode. What the app deliberately doesn’t do — it doesn’t measure temperature, doesn’t know where a medicine physically is, and won’t judge whether one is fit to use after a hot day in the car. It’s a tool for organising, not a sensor and not a medical adviser. The point: high heat can quietly worsen a medicine’s quality and durability before the date on the box is even up, and a medicine that looks fine isn’t proof that it is fine. If you see a change — a suppository that’s melted and set again, a syrup that’s separated, a swollen blister — set that pack aside and ask at the pharmacy. In summer a few habits do most of the work: cool, dry, in the original packaging, away from the car and the sun, medicines carried in your hand luggage rather than the hold — and if in doubt, ask at the pharmacy. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline In this episode: the “Storage” section on the medicine card, the colour-coded expiry alerts, a note per medicine, grouping medicines by where they sit at home, the shared cabinet view Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

8:46

S01:E16 Jul 13, 2026

Episode 16 — Does mum take them regularly? The question nobody can answer at the GP

You’re at the GP with your mum. The doctor looks up from the screen and asks one simple thing: does mum take her medicines regularly. And you go quiet — because, hand on heart, you don’t know what to say. “I think so.” That’s all you’ve got. This episode is about the record that lets you answer that question with facts instead of a guess — from the organisation side, not the treatment side. Straight off, honestly: this isn’t an episode about what to take or how much. It’s a record of what was ticked and when — a fact, not a verdict. What you make of it, and where you go from there, is a conversation with the doctor, not with your phone. Where the app helps (and where it deliberately doesn’t): A History calendar, coloured by ticked doses — each day takes its colour from how many of that day’s planned doses got ticked off. Tap a day and a list opens: what time, which medicine, how many, and who it was for. A day with a gap shows part ticked and part not — no guessing. Filter by person or by medicine — show only mum’s history, or just one medicine as far back as your history goes. A report for the doctor — pick the person, the medicine and the date range, and the app puts it together into a clear document. You save it as a file, email it, or just show it there and then. It isn’t the app talking to the doctor; you hand over the facts and she reads and interprets them. A record that stays right — the real name of a medicine is kept in the history even after that medicine has left your cabinet, and every dose keeps the right person even after you delete the reminder. A record that drifts after a month is worth nothing. Ticking a dose the easy way — when the reminder comes in, you tap it and choose, for that one dose: Taken, Snooze fifteen minutes, or Skip. You don’t even have to open the app properly. Works offline — you tick a dose with no signal and it syncs itself when the signal’s back; adding and editing work offline too, and the app shows how many changes are waiting to sync. A record, not a judgement — the app doesn’t say “good” or “bad”. It only shows what was ticked and when. What’s free, said plainly — for free you see the last week of history; to go further back, that’s the Standard or Pro plan, or on the free plan you can keep it for longer after watching an advert. The point: next time the GP asks “does mum take her medicines regularly”, you don’t say “I think” — you say “here, this is the record”. The job of remembering everything comes off your shoulders. That’s what tools are for — not the head of a tired daughter at ten o’clock at night. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline In this episode: the History calendar, filtering by person or medicine, the report for the doctor, the dose actions (Taken / Snooze / Skip), offline ticking with a sync counter, the free-week history limit Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

12:33

S01:E15 Jul 13, 2026

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: “aren’t you running low on the heart one?” And her mum thinks she’s still got some. That “she thinks” is the whole story: a thousand kilometres and one “I think” between a daughter and her parent’s medicine drawer. This episode is about turning “I think mum’s still got some” into “I can see on the list how much is left” — from the organisation side, not the treatment side. Straight off, honestly: this isn’t an episode about what your parents should take or how much. It’s about a shared picture of supply and dates across a border. Decisions about treatment belong to the specialist who knows your parent. Where the app helps (and where it deliberately doesn’t): One shared cabinet in the cloud — instead of two half-pictures (yours from the phone, your parent’s from memory), there’s one list you both see: the names, the number of packs, the expiry dates and who each medicine’s assigned to. What your mum saves at her end, you see at yours once it syncs. The active substance instead of an unfamiliar brand — the app won’t translate a name from one country into another, and won’t tell you what a medicine’s called abroad; there’s no such feature, and we won’t pretend there is. What it does show is the active substance — the common language when you talk to a doctor or pharmacist. Paracetamol is paracetamol, whatever the box is branded. Scanning, with an honest caveat — a photo of the box reads the name, the active substance and the expiry date onto the list. But the matching runs against an official medicines register, so a box bought in another country might not come up — then you copy the active substance off the box and fix the details by hand. Expiry-status colours — each medicine shows at a glance what’s fine, what’s near its date and what’s past it, so from another country you can see whether a parent’s heart medicine isn’t showing red. A restock list that fills itself — set a threshold (the smallest number of packs); when the recorded stock drops below that minimum, the medicine lands on the “To restock” list. The list is shared too, so there’s no “I thought you were going to buy it”. Plans, said plainly — the free plan handles one cabinet, one member and up to twenty medicines; sharing starts with Standard (up to five people), and Pro goes up to ten. You’ll find the current prices in the app store. Sharing a cabinet across a border isn’t free, and we say so out loud. Offline, honestly — with no signal you’ve got the last synced list, not today’s; to see something a parent added this morning, the phone has to connect just once. Showing the list without logging in — when a parent goes to their own doctor and you’re not there, they can open a link or scan a code and show the shared list, with no logging in. The point: nothing here lets you look into the drawer back home from abroad. But a shared list, the colour of the dates, and the active substance instead of an unfamiliar brand are the difference between worrying at a distance and calm, concrete support. The app puts the facts in order; assessing and treating belong to a doctor or a pharmacist. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline (after a first sync) In this episode: the shared cabinet in the cloud, the active substance on the medicine card, scanning against the register, expiry-status colours, the “To restock” list, plan limits, sharing a list by link or QR code Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

8:33

S01:E13 Jul 13, 2026

Episode 13 — A note, a spreadsheet and an old app: moving your medicines into one place

A note off the fridge, an old reminder app, and a drawer with — honestly — who knows how much inside. One evening you decide: enough, get it all into one place. This episode is about exactly that move: bringing your medicines together into a single list, and the honest surprise most people hit on the way — there’s no “import a file” button. From the organisation side, not the treatment side. Straight off, honestly: this isn’t an episode about what to take or how much. It’s about getting a scattered drawer into one tidy list. What a medicine is for and how to take it — that’s for you, your GP or your pharmacist. Where the app helps (and where it deliberately doesn’t): Adding always starts with the camera — you open the “Add” tab (the camera icon along the bottom) and photograph the front of the box. There’s no “upload a spreadsheet”, no “move it over from another app in one tap”, no bare “type the name and confirm”. If you’ve already got a photo of the box in your gallery, you can pick that instead of snapping a new one. But a name on a scrap of paper, with no box and no photo, can’t be brought across. What the scan reads — off the photo the app pulls the name, the dose, the expiry date and the barcode. The barcode is just one of the recognised fields, not a key that fetches a full medicine card from a register. The batch number — the LOT — isn’t saved, so don’t go hunting for it in the app later. Recognition runs on a server — so scanning a new box needs an internet connection; with no signal the photo won’t process. Worth saying plainly. Fix anything by hand afterwards — open a medicine in the “Edit medication” view and tidy the name, dose, quantity, expiry date or a note. Typing exists — but as a correction after the photo, not as the way in. Assign each medicine to a person — this one’s Leon’s, this one’s Basia’s, this one’s grandma Irena’s. No more wondering who the pink box belongs to. An “expiring medications” list with status colours — red, amber, green (Urgent / Watch out / Safe), plus a widget on your home screen. It’s a list you look at, not a pop-up: there’s no “medicine expiring” push notification, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Share the cabinet, or share the list — invite the household in and everyone sees the same stock, or send the list itself to someone outside the family as a link. “All medicines” builds a shopping list, not your cabinet — it’s a browser of a database of about seventy thousand products; from there you drop items onto a restock list. A medicine only ever gets into your cabinet through a photo. Works offline — browsing, editing and ticking things off work without a network (out at the allotment, say); only scanning a new medicine needs a connection. The point: moving the list and having a tidy-up become one and the same job. You pick up each box, check the date, and the out-of-date ones go to one side to hand back at the pharmacy — not into the app. After one evening with the drawer and the camera, you’ve got a single list instead of a note, a spreadsheet and an old app, all separately. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline In this episode: adding by photo, the “Edit medication” view, assigning medicines to a person, the “expiring medications” list and status colours, sharing the cabinet, the “All medicines” register and the restock list Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

8:00

S01:E12 Jul 8, 2026

Episode 12 — Out of medicine on a Sunday: how not to panic

Sunday, half past seven in the evening. Your mum rings — she’s down to her last tablet of a medicine she takes every day. The chemist’s on the corner is shut, the next one no idea. And it’s the classic moment: you find out the pack’s empty on the last tablet, at the worst possible time. This episode is about how not to be caught out by that — from the supply-and-organisation side, without getting into treatment. Straight off, honestly: this isn’t an episode about how much of anything to take, or when. We’re talking about counting supply, thresholds and a shopping list. What to do with a medicine and how to take it — that’s for you, your GP or your pharmacist. Where the app helps (and where it deliberately doesn’t): The pack count keeps itself — every time you tick off a dose taken in the app, the count drops by one. mojApteczka knows how many are left, the whole time. It doesn’t scan anything in the background — it just counts from what you tick off. A threshold and a “low stock” notification — for each medicine you set a threshold (“warn me when there are five left”). When the count drops to it, you get a notification with the medicine’s name and how many are left. You get it a few days early, not on the last tablet — you bring the moment of panic forward. Can’t be bothered setting thresholds by hand? There’s a default one, working straight away. A shopping list (basket) — it fills itself: anything low or just out of date lands on it automatically. You add things by hand too — from a medicine’s menu, or from the “All medicines” register (the whole thing, tens of thousands of products), even something you haven’t got at home yet. One list for one trip to the chemist’s, ready to send to someone in the family. Works offline — the list and the counts are saved on the phone, so they work without a network (out at the allotment, say). Plan B, not the main character: and if you don’t manage it in time and the medicine’s gone now — that’s the bit no app fixes. Sunday and late-evening pharmacy opening is patchy, and which one’s actually open keeps changing. The honest way to check is to ring 111, the non-emergency line, and they’ll point you to a pharmacy that’s open — that’s a real-world resource, not something the app does. The app doesn’t do the pharmacy scramble. The point: everything else — the threshold, the notification, the shopping list — is there so you never have to reach for plan B at all. “There’s probably some left” isn’t a number you can rely on. The app turns it into an actual number. What you do with that is your decision. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline (after a first sync) In this episode: the self-counting pack stock, a threshold and the “low stock” notification, the shopping list (basket), the “All medicines” register Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

9:10

S01:E11 Jul 8, 2026

Episode 11 — The plaster's back home: a kit for camping in the woods

Nine in the evening, a tent at the edge of the woods, a child’s just grazed a knee on a root. You reach for a plaster — and it’s back home, in the drawer. The nearest chemist’s is twenty minutes’ drive and shut anyway. This episode is about what to pack in a camping kit so a grazed knee is a pit stop and not the end of the day — all from the packing-and-order side, without getting into treatment. Straight off, honestly: this isn’t an episode about how to treat something. A camping kit is for minor first aid and for keeping the medicines you’re carrying in order — not for rescue. With a serious injury, a big wound or a strong reaction after a bite, you ring 999 and get professional help. How is a camping kit different from the one at home? In the woods you can’t buy a thing after dark, often you’ve no signal, and the mosquitoes and ticks come as standard. So you pack for being on your own with whatever’s in the rucksack: a bit extra, things for insects and sun, a tick-removal tool, and a supply of regular medicines. Where the app helps (and where it deliberately doesn’t): The “Soon” tab — mojApteczka shows in colour what’s running out of date. And it’s not only medicines: you add sun cream or repellent the same way (off a photo of the pack, even), and they land on the same list. It’s a passive view you look at when you’re packing at home — not a background scan chasing you with notifications. The “to top up” list — as you log a pack being used and the supply drops below a threshold, the medicine lands on it. You catch what’s about to run out at home. A profile per person + a shared family list — everyone has their own profile, and a carer sees in one place who takes what. It works offline, but on one honest condition: the phone has to get a signal once and sync before you head into the woods. Ticks and repellent we leave honestly: you choose repellent by the label (the age of child it’s for) and use it as the instructions say, and what exactly to do after a bite — in line with public-health guidance or with the doctor. The app doesn’t spot a tick from a photo and doesn’t diagnose tick-borne illness. There’s a separate episode on ticks — “A tick after a walk”. And the most important sentence of the episode: on a camping trip the most important thing isn’t the kit, it’s a level head — you know where you are, the way in by road, and where to call help from. No kit replaces that. A short camping list: plasters (blister ones included), dressings, a bandage, antiseptic, gloves, scissors; repellent as the label says, a tick remover or tweezers, after-bite gel; sun cream, aftersun, rehydration salts and water; regular medicines — a supply plus a reserve, an offline list, a shared family list. And before you go — a check of the expiry dates at home. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline (after a first sync) In this episode: the “Soon” tab (expiry dates), the “to top up” list (low stock), a child’s profile, a shared family list Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

10:38

S01:E10 Jul 8, 2026

Episode 10 — The plaster's soggy, the sun cream's from last summer: a water kit with a child

The lake, a hot afternoon. A child runs down off the jetty and scrapes a foot on a board, a second later there’s sand in the eye, and over by the blanket a wasp lands on the sandwich. You reach into the bag — there’s sun cream, there’s a towel, and one plaster, already gone soggy. A day by the water with a child can throw up three little “crises” in five minutes. This episode is about what to pack so they stay a moment’s pause and not the end of the day — all from the organising side, without getting into treatment. Straight off, honestly: this isn’t an episode about how to treat a sting or an eye. A water kit is for minor first aid and for keeping a child’s medicines in order — not for rescue. With a near-drowning, a loss of consciousness, trouble breathing, a swollen face or a severe reaction, you ring 999 and call the lifeguard. How is a water kit any different from the one at home? Everything works against you at once: water and wet sand (an ordinary plaster peels off after the first swim — hence waterproof ones), strong sun bouncing off the surface, and a child who’s harder to keep an eye on. And the thing people pack but don’t check is the sun cream from last summer — it has an expiry date and a separate period once it’s opened. Where the app helps (and where it deliberately doesn’t): The “Soon” tab — mojApteczka shows in one place the things whose date is coming up. And it’s not only medicines: you can add sun cream with a date, and it lands on the same list. You see it at home, when you’re packing, not by the lake. (It’s a passive list you check, not a push notification.) The “low stock” notification — as you tick off the doses you’ve given and the supply drops below a threshold you set, the medicine lands on the “To top up” list. Not a background scan — plain counting as you tick off. A child’s medicine list — a separate profile for the child, their medicines not mixed in with yours. A shared family list — the other carer (a grandparent, the other family on a joint trip) sees the same list of the child’s medicines. It works offline — but on one honest condition: the phone has to catch signal once and sync. After that, by the water with no signal, the list is still to hand. And the most important sentence of the episode: by the water the most important thing isn’t the plaster and it isn’t the app — it’s constant supervision of the child, a lifeguarded beach and a lifeguard within sight. No kit replaces that. A short list for the water with a child: sun cream checked before you go, a hat and a T-shirt, waterproof plasters, a sterile dressing, antiseptic, tweezers, saline ampoules, something for bites and stings. Plus the child’s regular medicines: a supply and a reserve, an offline list, a shared family list. And over the lot of it — an eye on the child. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline (after a first sync) In this episode: the “Soon” tab (expiry dates), the “low stock” notification, a child’s medicine list, a shared family list Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

11:08

S01:E09 Jul 7, 2026

Episode 9 — A tick after a walk: the first ten minutes home

Saturday, late afternoon. Back from the allotment: Leon’s been running about on the grass half the day, Basia was picking daisies, the dog was nosing through the bushes. Everyone’s starving, someone wants the shower, someone’s after a charger. And that’s exactly when the thought you hear every summer comes back: when you get home, check nobody’s brought a tick back. This episode is about the first few minutes home — no panic, no hour on the internet. Straight off, honestly: this isn’t an episode where anyone tells you whether you’ve got Lyme disease. Any suspected infection after a tick bite is for a doctor to assess. Here we take apart what you can calmly do at home, based on standard public-health guidance. The first misunderstanding: ticks aren’t only in woodland. The guidance is that you’ll meet them in meadows, on grass, in parks, by water and in back gardens — exactly where families are in summer: a picnic, a blanket, the pram in the park. The second thing that changes how you think: ticks don’t drop from trees, they wait in the grass and low bushes. If it’s an ordinary walk, the response can be calm too — an ordinary habit, not an alarm. A simple ritual once you’re home (from the public-health guidance): Outer clothes in one place — a tick can travel over the fabric before it digs into skin. Check everyone over — the guidance points to warm, damp spots; on a child especially the scalp, behind the ears, the neck, the armpits, the groin, the backs of the knees, between the toes. Check the dog too, the blanket, the rucksack, the children’s things — a tick can come home on something other than a person. Write down what happened — the date, where you walked, where the bite is. A short note helps if you end up at the doctor with it in a few days. What the guidance advises against, and what it recommends. The old tricks — smearing with butter, burning, crushing — are out: irritating the tick can raise the risk of infection. Instead the advice is to grip the tick as close to the skin as you can and pull it out in one steady, firm movement, then disinfect the spot. And if a part’s left in the skin, or it’s a small child and you’re afraid to touch it — then you ring the doctor. That one does sound honest. A “tick kit” is trivial and fits in an ordinary home medicine cabinet — a tick tool or fine-tipped tweezers and something to disinfect with, no separate bag needed. A repellent for a child? The guidance is: stick to the label, don’t use it on the hands or around the mouth. And the most important sentence of the whole episode: the app won’t spot a tick and it doesn’t diagnose. mojApteczka won’t tell you whether a bite is dangerous — that’s for the doctor. The medicine cabinet’s role is much humbler, and honest for it: order, not diagnosis. Expiry-date alerts — so the repellent or the disinfectant doesn’t turn out to be out of date exactly when you need it. Notes — where you keep the tick tool, who in the family is allergic to something worth watching for. The family cabinet — when Leon goes to grandma Irena’s for a week, grandma, you and the other parent all see the same list, live. Low stock — the app can let you know a medicine you’ve entered is running low. The app keeps an eye on the list, not on health — the information about medicines is just that, information. When there are symptoms after a bite, a professional decides. And with children, splitting the jobs and staying calm beats scaring them: with Basia it’s a neutral “check after the adventure”, and Leon, nine, already points out where to look himself. The best outcome isn’t a fear of the woods — it’s a calm habit once you’re home. A quick recap (from standard public-health guidance): after you’re back from woods, park or meadow, check the whole body; don’t smear, burn or crush; write down the date and place; and any suspected infection after a bite is for a doctor to assess. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline In this episode: expiry-date alerts, notes, the family cabinet (a shared list, live), low-stock alerts Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

11:24

S01:E08 Jul 7, 2026

Episode 8 — A different box, the same substance

Saturday, half past seven in the evening. Tomasz and Izabela have popped out for a couple of hours; grandma Elżbieta is minding the children. Basia, five, is running a temperature. Grandma goes to the drawer for the fever syrup, picks up Iza’s phone — and before she’s opened anything, one line on the notification: “Warning: allergy to this medicine (Basia)”. This scene really happened. This episode takes it apart. How did the phone “know”? It didn’t. Three weeks earlier Basia came out in a slight rash after ibuprofen, and the paediatrician said to write it down. Iza opened the medicine, tapped “Flag allergy”, chose Basia, typed in the substance — a few seconds in the waiting room. The app didn’t diagnose anything. The doctor did that, and a person typed it in. The app only remembers — and reminds you at the moment it’s easiest to forget. The catch: the box from the drawer was a completely different brand from the one a month before. Different name, different logo. And yet the warning came up — because the app doesn’t look at the name on the box, it looks at the active ingredient inside. A different box, the same substance. That’s exactly when it’s easiest to slip up: you buy “something for a temperature” under a new name and you don’t connect it in your head with a rash from a month ago. The episode is honest about the limits. Matching by substance is the word “recognises”, not magic — a second pair of eyes, not the only pair; it doesn’t let you off reading the packet. The app warns about exactly what you entered, and about the same substance in other boxes — but it doesn’t guess about whole families of medicines it hasn’t been told about. Joining up related medicines is for the GP or the pharmacist. And one hard rule: the app will never block giving a medicine. Warn, don’t block — so you make the decision seeing the warning, not next to it. The second half is the mechanics you don’t spot at first glance: The warning at the very top of the notification — the newest change. It used to be visible inside the app, but the notification itself showed only the medicine’s name. Now the warning is the first thing you see, and it stays even after you snooze the reminder. Whether you see it on a locked screen depends on your notification-preview setting — the system decides that, not the app. With the name — “(Basia)”, so it’s clear who it’s about. Allergies are attached to the person: the same medicine, the same shelf, two children — and the app behaves differently for each. Leon, who doesn’t have that allergy, gets a clean notification. The warning follows the person, not the medicine. No signal needed — the warning works off what’s saved on the phone. It’ll work in the cellar or out at the allotment with no signal. And if one parent enters an allergy on their phone, the other has it on theirs — the medicine cabinet is shared and syncs between accounts. Deletions included. The report for the GP — allergies go to the very top of the report, split by person. It doesn’t replace the conversation with the doctor; it organises it, so it starts from a full list rather than memory under pressure. When you give a dose — ticking off a dose for a person with an allergy, the app asks you to confirm you’re aware of the allergy. The one moment it’s a little more insistent. The conclusion is the same all the way through: the app is memory. The knowledge is the GP and the pharmacist. It wasn’t the phone that saved anyone — it was Iza spending a few seconds to write something down, and the app handing it back at the moment it mattered. Topics: Why matching by active ingredient catches “the same” medicine in a different box — and why it isn’t a guarantee “Warn, don’t block”: why the app deliberately doesn’t make the decision for you The warning in the notification body, with the name, per person — and what does and doesn’t decide it An allergy that follows the person, works offline and syncs across the family The report for the GP and the dose confirmation as a way to keep things from evaporating on a feverish evening Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline The allergy feature: flag per person, match by active ingredient, warning in the reminder and in the GP report Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

11:12

S01:E07 Jul 7, 2026

Episode 7 — EXP, LOT, and the date that isn't on the box

You’re standing at the medicine cabinet, holding a box that’s been in there “a while now”. Tiny print down the side: a few digits, some letters, then another string of characters. Which one is the expiry date? And has it gone past it yet? This episode takes the tiny letters on a pack apart — Tomasz and Izabela read a box so it takes a second, not an evening. EXP, “Use by”, “Expiry date” — they all mean the same thing: the expiry date. Most often written as a month and a year, for instance 06/2027. That means the medicine is good until the end of that month — so the thirtieth of June. If there’s a full date with a day on the pack, it runs to exactly that date. The format varies from country to country, so when the order of the numbers isn’t clear, safest to take the more cautious reading and, if in doubt, ask the pharmacist. LOT (the batch number) is that second string, the one that trips most people up. It’s the production-batch identifier — useful for recalls (when the medicines regulator suspends a medicine, it’s usually for one specific batch) and for complaints. The key thing: the batch number is not a date and tells you nothing about expiry. You spot the date by the words “EXP” / “Use by” and the month-year format; the batch by the word “LOT” / “Batch number”. A simple trick: a date usually has a slash or a dot between two numbers — and in the end the label next to it settles which is which. The opening date — the thing that isn’t on the pack at all. The date on the box is for the medicine sealed. Some medicines have a shorter life once opened (classically eye drops and syrups) — but you’ll find that in the leaflet, in the section on storage, not on the box. And when you opened the bottle is something no one records for you. Hence one small habit: you open the eye drops or the syrup — jot down the opening date. In biro on the label, or in a note against the medicine. Where mojApteczka fits in — honestly, with its limits: Photograph the pack instead of copying dates in by hand. The app reads the name and the expiry date, among other things, off the photo, and checks what it read against an official medicines register. Expiry shown in colour — green (date’s a long way off), orange (getting close), red (nearly up, or already gone). Checking your dates is a glance down a list, not pulling every box out. Add the opening date in a note against the medicine — where you’ll always find it, rather than on a scrap of paper that goes missing. A second box of the same medicine — often with a different batch number and a different expiry — gets flagged by active ingredient, before you buy a third. What the app deliberately does not do: it doesn’t read the batch number (LOT) off the photo, it doesn’t work out the post-opening shelf life for you (that’s in the leaflet for the specific product), and it doesn’t judge whether a medicine “will still work”. It’s a tool for running your home medicine cabinet, not for making medical decisions — those are for your GP and your pharmacist. Topics: EXP / “Use by” / “Expiry date” — and what just a month and a year means LOT (the batch number): what it’s for and why it isn’t a date How to tell the expiry date from the batch number at a glance Blister strip vs box: why it’s worth copying the date off before you bin the carton The opening date — what isn’t on the pack, and how to handle it Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline Return unused or expired medicines to the pharmacy (take-back / safe disposal) — never the bin or the sink Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

10:02

S01:E05 Jul 7, 2026

Episode 5 — Seven boxes in a carrier bag. What no single doctor sees

Iza empties her mum’s handbag onto the kitchen table and out come seven boxes of medicine. Seven. One from the cardiologist, two from the GP, two for her joints from the rheumatologist — and two Irena can’t even name. “The pink one” and “the little white one.” She isn’t muddled. She’s on the same road as an awful lot of people her age. This episode isn’t about an app feature. It’s about what no single doctor sees. Taking several medicines at once has a name — polypharmacy — and it’s closer to the norm than the exception: in a large Polish study, more than four in ten over-65s were on five medicines or more, and over half of the over-80s. Each medicine, on its own, usually has a good reason behind it. The cardiologist looked at the heart, the rheumatologist at the joints. Nobody looked at the whole. That’s how you get a prescribing cascade: one medicine causes a side effect, the next doctor treats the side effect with another medicine, and nobody walks it back to where it started. Not spite, not stupidity — just no one whose job it is to see the whole list at once. The line we hold: the mojApteczka app doesn’t prescribe anything and doesn’t stop anything. It signals. What to actually do about a duplicate or an interaction is for the GP or the pharmacist to decide — always. Your job isn’t to be the doctor. It’s to make sure the doctor gets one full, current list instead of seven boxes in a carrier bag. What the app actually does (and what helped that day): A report for the GP — active ingredient of each medicine, the schedule, all grouped under one person, turned into a document with one tap. That’s exactly where two boxes with different names but the same substance stop hiding. An interaction check before you add a new medicine — pick what’s there, and the app shows you whether there’s a clash and how serious. It flags; it doesn’t decide. A carer view — set up as your parent’s carer and see, from your own phone, what’s planned for today and what’s been ticked off as taken. No more ringing at seven in the evening to ask “did you take the pink one?” Expiry-date reminders — so a duplicate doesn’t only surface once it’s already waste. Elsewhere they’ve a handle on this: in Germany, anyone regularly on three or more prescribed medicines has a right to a single, shared medication plan. Here in the UK you can get a medication review — your GP or a pharmacist going through the lot. But walking into that review with the complete, current picture — and keeping it current in between — still tends to fall to the family. At least now there’s a tool for it: one page a GP can read in ten seconds. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline Return unused medicines to the pharmacy (take-back / safe disposal) — never the bin or the sink Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

11:24

S01:E04 Jul 7, 2026

Episode 4 — Two packs in the drawer. The hardest habit to break

Saturday morning, half ten. Iza’s got her coat on, keys in hand, one foot out the door: “I’ve run out of Zovirax, I’m off to the chemist’s.” Tomasz, over his coffee mug: “have you checked the app — are you sure you haven’t got any?” Iza types in the name — and sees two packs. Two. Sitting in the drawer, bought, unopened. One she’d bought, one he had. This episode isn’t about an app feature. It’s about a HABIT. The hardest thing about using a digital medicine cabinet isn’t learning the app — it’s resetting one reflex drilled in over years: “I need a medicine, so I go to the chemist’s.” That reflex runs on autopilot, and it skips right past everything you already know is at home. We break the old habit down into three costs, all from that one scene: Money — you pay a second (sometimes third) time for something already in the drawer. Time — the drive and the hunt for an open chemist, especially of an evening or on a Sunday, when surprisingly few are actually open. The environment — the duplicate sits there, goes out of date, and ends up as waste. You don’t chuck a medicine in the bin or down the sink — you take it back to the pharmacy. Fewer duplicates means fewer out-of-date medicines and less to dispose of. The second layer: why the habit is so stubborn — autopilot, “quicker to buy than check”, not quite trusting a “digital memory” — and how to break it with a small ritual: ten seconds in the app before you leave the house. The line we hold: the mojApteczka app doesn’t prescribe anything and doesn’t treat anything. It shows you what you told it you had in the house. Zovirax here is purely an inventory example — we never say what it’s for or how to take it. What the app actually does (and what helped that Saturday): The “what’s in my cabinet” list plus search by name — type the name and see how many you’ve got, before you head out for another pack Duplicate detection by barcode when you add a new pack — a second chance, for when the habit wins and you’ve already bought it Expiry-date reminders — so you don’t find out about the duplicate only once it’s nothing but waste A shared family cabinet — you both see the same list, so you don’t buy the same thing twice. Not surveillance — one shared view instead of two separate guesses Phone first, then keys. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline Return unused medicines to the pharmacy (take-back / safe disposal) — never the bin or the sink Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the show notes and in the episode outro.

14:02

S01:E03 Jul 7, 2026

Episode 3 — You've missed a dose of the antibiotic. What now?

Friday evening, half past seven. Leon, nine years old, day three of an antibiotic for his ear — Augmentin, three times a day. And that two o’clock dose, in the middle of a fever and phone calls to the GP, simply slipped away. The little pink syringe stayed on the worktop, untouched. Iza settles her son to sleep and doesn’t know: give a double dose to make up for it? Skip it? Ring the GP on a Friday night? This episode is about what to do in the MOMENT of a missed dose — not about why we miss them. Because a missed dose isn’t the exception, it’s the norm: with long-term treatments, half of patients miss doses (World Health Organisation data, after Sabaté 2003), and with short antibiotic courses the proportion that go unfinished is higher still. Tomasz draws the line most medical apps don’t respect: the mojApteczka app does NOT prescribe. It won’t tell you whether to double a dose — because that’s a decision for the pharmacist or the GP. The app hands you the FACTS for that phone call: the dose counter on the card (“Dose 7 of 21”), today’s times with a status colour, the red “Due” entry. Panic turns into one precise question. Topics: The myth of “double the dose, we’ll make it up” — and why an app that pretends to know the rule for every medicine is an app that lies You tap “Taken” on the notification — the dose is recorded immediately, on-device, even with no signal (it syncs back once you’ve got signal again) At the GP: the PDF report from the app is a treatment SCHEDULE (medicine + dose, active ingredient, timing, details) — not a verdict on the parent. You say the counter out loud — “twenty of twenty-one, I missed one” — not from memory Shame vs the counter: why a parent says “I’ve kept up with it” and how that feeds the loop of a stronger antibiotic and resistance The second layer — an older person on many medicines (a callback to Joanna from the previous episode): a missed furosemide isn’t the same as a missed vitamin D, and the app rightly does NOT decide which one is dangerous Levothyroxine and the sandwich generation: “did I take it today or not?” — an end to taking a second one just to be safe The bottle runs out: a low-stock warning in your cabinet, before the antibiotic runs out on a Sunday night with the chemists shut The app is a tool for MEMORY. The GP and the pharmacist are KNOWLEDGE. Those are two different things. Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl — free, works offline Sabaté J. (ed.), “Adherence to Long-Term Therapies: Evidence for Action”, WHO 2003 Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the episode outro.

9:52

S01:E02 Jul 7, 2026

Episode 2 — The tablet on Gran's wall. Keeping on top of a parent's eight medicines a day

Saturday morning, twenty past nine. Izabela’s mother-in-law, Joanna, seventy-three, is on the phone: “that pink tablet, the one for my blood pressure — I think I’ve taken it, but I took it yesterday as well, and now I can’t tell if it was twice.” Eight medicines a day, three different consultants, none of them aware of the others. And Iza — two kids, still in her pyjamas, coffee in one hand — is meant to work out whether to say “take the pink one” or “don’t, you might already have”. This episode is about the sandwich generation and a parent on too many medicines. Tomasz explains why nearly one in two people aged sixty-five and over in England are on five or more medicines a day — a figure that has roughly quadrupled in a generation (Cognitive Function and Ageing Study, England) — and shows a concrete answer: a tablet on the kitchen wall with the moya pteczka app open all day, so an older person no longer has to keep count of their doses. She isn’t ASKING herself whether she took it. She SEES that she has. Topics: Why most answers to this are just an alarm — which does nothing if the older person doesn’t remember to check in the first place The tablet as a shared board — a progress bar, colour-coded times, and a status for each dose An hour late turns the bar amber; three hours turns it red and marks the dose missed. Those are the values written into the app, the same for every user Why it isn’t surveillance: the colour appears FIRST for the older person (the tablet’s on her wall, she walks past first). Family see the very same thing, passively — no midnight texts The practical bit: which tablet, where to hang it, how to set it up, and data protection — Joanna’s account is hers, and she invites the family in “We don’t take control, we share the view” — the philosophy of the sandwich generation Materials: The moya pteczka app: mojapteczka.pl Family view (iOS 1.7.8): ward cards with a daily-adherence bar Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (CFAS I vs CFAS II), Age and Ageing ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the episode outro.

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S01:E06 Jul 6, 2026

Episode 6 — Mum hides the blister in the drawer. Five reasons we knowingly don't take our medicines

A week after the story of the seven boxes, Izabela goes through her mum’s medicines again. One blister pack — nearly full. A repeat medicine, from a month ago, with three tablets out of thirty taken. And the strangest part: her mum hadn’t forgotten. Asked straight out, she said “that tablet makes me feel off, so I’ve let it go”. She had knowingly tucked the blister away in a drawer. This episode is about that second, harder case. Not “I forgot to take my medicine” (that was the previous episode), but: why people KNOWINGLY don’t take their medicines the way the GP prescribed. The World Health Organization counted it years ago — with long-term conditions, in countries like ours, roughly half of patients don’t take their medicines as prescribed (Sabaté, 2003). Tomasz admits that when he was building the app, he thought at first it was a memory problem — that a good reminder would be enough. It isn’t. A reminder only solves one of the reasons. The other four won’t be moved by an alarm. Five barriers, behaviourally, with no medical verdicts: Fear of side effects — you feel something unpleasant (or just read the leaflet) and quietly stop. The app doesn’t judge whether a medicine is safe — that’s for the doctor or the pharmacist. It keeps the list of what someone takes and what they won’t touch, so there’s something to ask about. Cost — a pensioner stretches a medicine out, takes it every other day, splits tablets. The app won’t make a medicine any cheaper, but it shows the active ingredient as a starting point for a conversation at the pharmacy. Whether a swap is possible in a given case is for the pharmacist or the GP to decide, not the app. “I feel fine, so why take it” — lethal especially with high blood pressure, which doesn’t hurt. Why you take a given medicine is for the GP to explain; the app only gives you a place for a note: “what this is for, who prescribed it”. Shame and low mood — the quietest reason. That’s why the app never judges anyone: instead of “you’ve skipped it again” there’s a dry counter — today, two out of four. The fact can go to the GP; the shame stays in the drawer. Simply too many medicines — with seven boxes taken at different times of day, you take the ones you remember. Which ones are “more important” shouldn’t be settled by the patient alone at the kitchen table. Only when the GP sees the whole list can they judge whether something can be changed, simplified or stopped. The conclusion is an honest one: of these five reasons, the app moves maybe one — the overload-and-chaos one, because it tidies the list and reminds. It won’t soothe fear, won’t patch a tight budget, won’t explain the goal of a treatment and won’t take the shame away. All of that stays with people — the GP, the pharmacist, the family. The app does one thing: it turns a quiet “I didn’t take it” into a list you can see. And what you can see, you can talk about. At the end, Izabela tells the story of her dad, Krzysztof: for six months he took half the dose of his blood pressure tablet — he’d halved it himself, and nobody knew. It only came out when his medicines were being put into a list for the GP — not through a row, through the list. What happens with the dose next is for the GP to decide, not the kitchen table and not the app. Topics: Unintentional non-adherence (forgetting) vs intentional (a conscious decision) — and why the second is more common than it seems Five barriers that “a good reminder” won’t help with Why the mojApteczka app consistently says “this it will not do” — it signals rather than prescribes; the decision stays with the GP or the pharmacist The list and the report for the GP as the way a quiet decision becomes a conversation Materials: The mojApteczka app: mojapteczka.pl PDF report for the doctor + an account-free interaction checker Contact: kontakt@mojapteczka.pl World Health Organization, “Adherence to Long-Term Therapies” (Sabaté, 2003) ⸻ About AI in this episode. The dialogue was written by Tomasz Szuster. The voices you hear are AI-generated synthetic voices — not recordings of the hosts. We say this straight out, because we think it should be the standard for any podcast made this way. Full details in the episode outro.