On your lock screen
Set the code as your phone wallpaper. Anyone who picks the phone up sees it without unlocking anything. Works on iPhone and Android, and needs no permission from either.
For travellers
Sixteen hours from home, nobody knows your history.
A clinic in a country where you do not speak the language, and everything that matters about your health is in a file eleven thousand kilometres away. Dr Scribble™ puts what a treating doctor needs behind a code you carry, and your full record in a vault you can open from anywhere.
Anywhere you land
A code does not care which country it is in.
Emergency ScribeScan is a scannable code. There is no app for the person helping you to download, no account for them to create, and no login for them to get past. Any phone with a camera opens it.
That is the whole point of the format. It works the same in a Bangkok emergency department, a clinic in Patagonia, and a ski patrol hut, because a camera and a connection are the only things it asks for.
01
Nothing to install
No app, no account, no login on the responder's side.
02
Any camera
The device in the responder's pocket is already the reader.
03
Seconds, not phone calls
Allergies, medicines and next of kin, without waking anyone at home.
The person scanning needs a working connection on their own device. Where you expect to travel beyond reliable coverage, carry the printed card described below. It is the part that does not need a battery.
Five ways, on purpose
Carry it so that one failure is not the end of it.
A phone is a single point of failure, and it fails in exactly the circumstances that produce an emergency. Flat after a long-haul flight. Smashed in the accident itself. Left in the hotel safe. So the code travels three ways.
As your medical card photo
Your phone's built-in emergency card carries a picture. Load the code there instead of your face, and it is reachable from the locked screen through the emergency route, without a passcode and without opening your photos.
In the medical card's text
The same card holds allergies, conditions, medicines and contacts as plain text. Fill it in, and put your ScribeScan address in the notes, so the details survive a cracked camera lens or a responder who does not scan.
In your vehicle
A code inside the windscreen or on the driver's door pillar. At a crash scene the phone is often thrown clear, crushed or face down, and the person cannot answer questions. The car is the one thing still at the scene, and it is the first place a responder is already looking.
Printed, in your wallet
A card the size of a bank card, and a luggage tag. No battery, no signal, no screen to shatter. For serious travel this is not the backup. It is the one most likely to still be working.
Worth being precise about
Five routes, because each one fails differently.
The lock screen fails if the phone is face down or shattered. The medical card fails if the responder does not know to look for it, which varies enormously by country. The wallet card fails if you changed jackets. The car is no use if you were not in it. None of them fails in the same circumstances as the others, which is the entire argument for carrying all five.
One thing to be clear about with the vehicle code. It points at whoever set it up. If somebody else is driving your car, or a passenger is the one hurt, a responder may be reading the wrong person's profile. Label it with the name it belongs to, and treat it as a strong first answer rather than a certain one.
Two things to check on your own handset rather than take on trust. That the code still scans cleanly at the size your medical card renders it, since a code that is legible on a laptop is not always legible on a lock screen at arm's length. And that you are content to trade the identifying photograph for the code, because a responder loses a way of confirming that the phone belongs to the person in front of them.
What they see
Enough to treat you safely. Not your whole life.
The emergency view is deliberately narrow. It answers the questions a stranger must answer before touching you, and it stops there.
Your full history, consultation summaries, letters and results, sits behind the vault, which stays under your control and opens only when you decide to open it.
ScribeScan makes this information reachable. It does not replace telling a treating practitioner about your history where you are able to.
Emergency ScribeScan
Reachable in seconds
- Blood typeO positive
- AllergiesPenicillin
- MedicinesMetformin, 850mg
- ConditionType 2 diabetes
- Next of kinListed, with number
You decide
Nothing moves unless you say so.
Your record is encrypted, and every entry carries a tamper-evident mark, so it can be shown that what is being read is what was written and that nothing was quietly changed afterwards.
Sharing the vault is a decision you make, each time, for a named person or practice. You can see what has been shared. You can stop sharing.
Before the next trip
Set it up once. Carry it everywhere after that.
Dr Scribble™ reaches you through your practice, so the code is built from a record a doctor has already confirmed rather than a form you filled in yourself. That is the difference between a profile and a medical record.