Calendula is with no doubt, the best medication management Android app for patients and mothers
There is no shortage for medication apps for mobile phones, either for iOS and Android devices. However, they always come with a cost, If the app is not paid, it is not actually free, it often comes with annoying advertisements and limited feature with in-app purchase to become more usable.
Fortunately, Calendula is not one of these apps, It's completely free android application which helps patients manage their medication, a privacy aware and without any ads or in-app purchase.
Even more, Calendula is a complete open-source community-powered project that is packed by dozen of developers who keep it updated and maintained.
Calendula is developed by a team from Centro Singular de Investigación en Tecnoloxías da Información da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (CiTIUS) with collaboration of patients and healthcare professionals to get the best outcome and make the application usable for the end-users.
Why do we like Calendula?
We highly recommend using Calendula simply because It's:
- Ads-free
- Features-rich
- Easy-to-use
- Supports multiple patients, so mothers can use it to track and manage medication timing for their kids.
- Privacy features
- Lightweight application
Performance
Calendula is a lightweight native Android application which performs really well on old android versions and old devices with minimal hardware requirement. As we tested it, we found it performing smoothly without any problem.
A Snap preview
First time you open the app after install, You will notice a startup slider that educate the users how to use it.
As I was trying to get a screenshot turned out, the screenshot was disabled for privacy reasons, which also was disabled across the application itself, and that was a very nice privacy feature. However, screen recording works without any problem for the slider but it makes a complete black screen for the rest of the app views, which is another amazing privacy-aware feature.
The application has a nifty privacy options where the user can lock the application with a PIN and set a timer to lock the app. Fingerprint unlock is also available.
The user also can disable the screenshot blocking by default from the settings/ privacy menu.
The application has a tabbed user interface which makes all the functionalities easily accessible:
- A home tab: lists all drug schedules
- User's medicines tab: which holds a list of all added medications from the database (Spanish drugs database) or manually added drugs by users
- Routines: contains all user's routines
- Medication schedules: Where the user sets his medication schedules and alerts.
I downloaded the Spanish Drugs Database through the application which was surprisingly fast and contain the drugs I locked for, I believe it will work with many users in many countries without a problem as many drugs share names across the globe.
The only downside for the application that it's not multi-lingual as the interface is primarily in English. Let's hope we can get that in the next releases.
Features
- Free and open-source
- Lightweight
- highly customizable
- medication reminder
- Medication kits and classifications
- Advanced Flexible scheduling
- Routine-aware
- Multiple patients support
- Supports other patients (children, senior patients)
- Easy-to-use
- Eye candy material design user-interface design to ensure seamless experience
- Privacy-aware design
- Drug leaflets download
- Beautiful artwork
- Supported and maintained by a community of developers
- Supports a complex schedules
- Drug barcode scanner
- Spanish drugs database support (AEMPS Database)
- Drugs form (Capsule, powder, Pills, Effervescent, Drops, Syrup, ... etc)
- In-stock option
- Privacy options: PIN lock, Fingerprint unlock, disable screenshot
- Notification and alarms settings with repeat options
Get Calendula
Calendula is available for download on Google Play Store. However, many users nowadays use F-Droid as their primary Android application store for security reasons and privacy concern, So they can be relaxed as Calendula is available there as well.
To download the app, please check our resources section blow.
License
Calendula source code is released as a complete open-source project under GPL-3.0 Licenses.
Resources
- Calendula: https://tec.citius.usc.es/calendula/
- Google Play Store: link
- GitHub: https://github.com/citiususc/calendula
- F-Droid Download: https://f-droid.org/packages/es.usc.citius.servando.calendula/
- https://citius.usc.es/
- Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels
