When you use a medication tracking app, you’re sharing some of your most personal information: what health conditions you have, what drugs you take, and how often you take them.
Have you ever thought about where that data goes?
The Problem with “Free” Health Apps
Many popular health apps are free to download but have a hidden cost: your data.
How they make money: selling anonymised (or not-so-anonymised) data to pharmaceutical companies, sharing information with health insurance partners, displaying targeted ads based on your health conditions, and providing “insights” to research firms and data brokers.
When the app is free, you’re not the customer — you’re the product.
What’s at Risk?
Your medication history reveals a lot about you: mental health conditions (antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications), chronic diseases (diabetes, heart disease, HIV), reproductive health (contraception, fertility treatments), and pain management (which can affect employment and insurance).
This information could theoretically affect insurance premiums, employment decisions, personal relationships, and future medical care.
Even “anonymised” data can often be re-identified, especially when combined with other datasets.
Questions to Ask Before Using a Health App
- Where is my data stored? On your device or their servers?
- Do I need an account? Accounts usually mean cloud storage.
- What permissions does it request? Does a pill reminder really need your location?
- What does the privacy policy say? Look for mentions of “partners,” “third parties,” or “anonymised data sharing.”
- How does the company make money? If it’s free with no paid version, data might be the product.
A Better Approach: Local-First Apps
Some apps store data only on your device — no cloud, no servers, no accounts. This is called “local-first” or “offline-first” design.
Benefits of local storage include: your data can’t be hacked from the company’s servers, no account means nothing to breach, the company literally can’t see your data, the app works offline, and no terms of service changes can suddenly expose your data.
The trade-off is that you’re responsible for backing up your data if you want to transfer it to a new device. But for many people, that’s a worthwhile trade for true privacy.
How MedChime Handles Privacy
We built MedChime with privacy as a core feature, not an afterthought:
- All data stored locally on your device
- No account required to use the app
- No internet permission requested (you can verify this in settings)
- No analytics or tracking of any kind
- No ads, even in the free version
- We make money from the app, not from your data
We can’t see your medications. We don’t know your name. We have no data to sell, share, or lose in a breach.
That’s privacy by design.
Ready for a Private Medication Reminder?
Download MedChime and keep your health data where it belongs — on your phone.