Younger people are always the most comfortable demographic with new technology and, because of that, it should come as no surprise that many of them are utilizing smartphones as ways to organize their lives. Young parents have a great deal of responsibility and, quite often, that means having information about their children readily accessible and that information is sometimes very complex. Rather than paging through a paper organizer as their parents may have done, younger people have adopted networking and digital information storage as ways to organize their parenting.
Apps Make it Possible
Smartphones themselves generally come with features that make it very easy to organize social media profiles, emails, text messages, contact lists, calendars and so forth. These features, however, are designed to appeal to the greatest number of people, rather than being specifically useful to a particular demographic. For younger parents, apps that make it easy for them to organize information related to their children provide a way for them to have everything they need at their fingertips whenever they need it.
As an example of this, apps that allow parents to keep medical information about their children on their smartphones provide a great deal of insight. These apps are far more than note taking applications. The way they’re designed makes it easy to organize information into logical categories, which makes it easier to retrieve when needed. For example, information about medications is stored separately from information about doctors, eliminating the need to scour through disorganized notes when a parent needs to answer a question.
These apps also include features that add a bit of financial management capability to the smartphone. Insurance and expenses are oftentimes provided as separate features, meaning that the parent can keep detailed track of their insurance policies and all the applicable numbers they need and that they can keep the expenses for their child’s medical treatment separately. This can allow them to make it easier to understand whom to contact to pay for a service and not getting that confused with how much they actually did end up paying for the service.
Whenever a smartphone is being used for such a vital purpose, it becomes imperative that the app being used is designed in a way that significantly reduces the chances that information will be lost. For younger users, thinking about all of the possibilities that the future might hold is sometimes something that is overlooked. While younger users may be keen to adapt new technologies to make life easier, they sometimes neglect to secure those technologies properly, which is why some of the features on medical apps and other apps designed to hold sensitive information are so vital.
Backups and Exports
One of the ways that technology has evolved since it has become more powerful and more portable is that it has become more connected. Rather than relying on one simple device to hold a great deal of information, technology that is used for these vital purposes is oftentimes networked in with backup services and has the ability to export records so that they can be stored on different devices. This means that, should the smartphone be lost or destroyed – or simply changed out for a new one – the information can instantly be populated back into the app being used, as the information itself is not dependent upon the device.
For young parents, being able to keep information about their children readily accessible and securely backed up is a great way to make parenting easier. Where medical information is concerned, the capabilities of the apps that parents are using these days offer far more than convenience.
Ben Blanchard is the Programming Services Manager for Acadian, the creator of the Family Medical Manager app. The Family Medical Manager app is the definitive medical record app for families and individuals.
