Living With

So far this app has helped me more than my GP! It sounds weird but this could be the way healthcare needs to go

This app was pretty low rated to start with. However it is now completely non-functional since upgrading my iPhone to iOS 16. I had been using the fatigue diary daily (this was just about the only useful and functionalcomponent of the app) but can no longer even do that now. The app opens but I get an error log message. Functionality prior to app failure was mostly frustrating. I’d used it to track my medication also but found this impossible to update in any efficient way (I can’t amend the start date of my meds so I have a long list of non-taken days and can’t edit this in any way other than going through each individual day - impossibly time consuming). I thought this would be useful but it is just an annoying app that raises stress levels.

This app includes a lot of very inaccurate information about long Covid that was clearly written at the start of the pandemic and has not been updated since. Not only does it recommend several tasks that would severely increase the user’s fatigue symptoms, but it features staggeringly inaccurate science. I stopped using it in week 2 when I read that poor sleep may be due to ‘high cortisol levels’ - one biomarker found in everyone with long Covid is low cortisol. The fatigue diary will be useful to those who are still struggling to manage their energy, but as this app is used by those attending long Covid clinics, it’s likely that most people will have found their own helpful patterns in the five or six months it takes to get a referral. I feel for anyone coming to this app without having followed the scientific research done into long Covid, as it will, at best, misinform them, and at worst make their symptoms worse.