How the Support-O daily check-in works

One check-in a day, and a text to the people you chose only if that check-in goes unanswered.

1. You choose the time and the people

In the app you set the name you want to be greeted by and the time you would like your good morning. Then you add the people who should be told if a morning goes unanswered — usually a son, daughter, spouse or close friend. You choose how long to wait first: 35 minutes, up to six hours for somebody who wakes at a different time every day, or 12, 24 or 48 hours as a safety net for somebody who lives alone. Pressing Thank You at any point before the time is up, even on a later day, means nobody is told.

2. Every morning, the phone says good morning

At your time, your phone greets you by name. If you do not answer, it reminds you again five and ten minutes later. You tap THANK YOU, and that is the whole job. Nothing is sent to anybody.

3. If the morning goes unanswered

Our server, not your phone, watches the clock. That matters: a phone that is off, flat or lost cannot raise the alarm about itself, so the check happens somewhere else. When the time you chose runs out, the people on your list get one text:

Support-O: Mike has not answered their morning check-in. You may want to check on them.

That is the whole message. It asks them to check on you, because that is the only useful thing to do with it — so there is no second text afterwards to say you answered. By then whoever received it has already rung you and knows.

The extras, if you want them

Behind the same screen you can keep a medication list with your own photographs of each pill, and an exercise and physical therapy list in your doctor's or physical therapist's words. None of it is required, and none of it is a tick-box: Support-O records what you were told to do. It never claims to know whether a pill was taken.

For the same reason the medication list is not for anyone who cannot manage their own medication — after a brain injury, or with dementia or another condition affecting memory or judgement. It repeats what was typed in and checks nothing, and a list that looks authoritative while verifying nothing is worse than none. That situation needs a person.

The people you add

Ask them first. When you add someone, we send them one text saying who added them and what it means, and they can reply STOP at any time. Details are on the text messages and consent page.