Amazing Apps: Backpack Health

Too often during the holiday hustle, health risk, concerns and safety fall wayside to celebrating, shopping and timelines – particularly if you’re traveling. But what many do not realize, whether it be an unforeseen accident, food reaction or chronic or serious condition, medical emergencies are most prevalent during the winter holiday season.

This year, with 2018 U.S. holiday travel volume projected to be its highest in more than a decade (since 2005) and during the most dangerous holidays to be on the road, travelers should take heightened precautions to protect their health and safety [AAA].

HOLIDAY TRAVEL

Be Prepared – Health Risk, Concerns and Safety

Most dangerous holidays for road travel:

• Thanksgiving Day
• New Year’s Day

Fatal heart attacks spikes Dec. 25 and Jan. 1

• The highest incidence of cardiac mortality for the entire year [AHA]

Emergency Room visits increase / top reasons

Christmas through New Year’s Day -> 23 percent spike

• Alcohol Intoxication 
• Injuries/burns from cooking/decorating/wrapping
• Electrocution
• Traffic accidents

While medical emergencies may not be predictable, travelers can prepare and protect themselves, family and friends before heading into the holidays by having pertinent medical information on-hand. This is particularly important for family caregivers (e.g. parent caring for a child; adult child caring for an aging parent). Backpack Health, a free mobile app provides secure access to personalized, comprehensive medical information and documents – including wellness, illnesses, injuries, chronic health conditions, physicians, prescriptions, allergies and treatments – in one central location, your mobile device.

The Backpack Health app is multilingual; it translates framework text, such as medication names, dates and titles, into English, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese, allowing users to share vital health considerations and communicate with medical professionals when traveling abroad.

To download the Backpack Health app, visit the App Store for iOS devices or  the Google Play for Android devices.

Backpack Health, LLC builds secure, innovative information tools to help people manage their health journey – including wellness, illnesses, injuries, and chronic health conditions. The Backpack Health mission is to make it easy for everyone to access, own and control their health information to support better health care and attain better health for themselves, their loved ones and their communities.  Backpack Health provides a platform for organizations to engage patients, collect up-to-date data and build communities around the globe.  To assure data protection for its users’ information, Backpack Health complies with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), adheres to its data protection principles, and participates in the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks.  Learn more at www.backpackhealth.com.