MedicTag

Gadgeteer Hands On Review by Julie

March 07, 2007

We all know or remember seeing someone at one time or another that has worn a medical alert ID bracelet or necklace. I think I vaguely recall my Dad buying one for my Mom when she was first diagnosed with Diabetes. These days you don't really see people wearing this method of medical identification. I don't know if they are just considered old fashioned or if the companies that make them have stopped promoting them. That's why I was intrigued when the folks at CWI Medical asked me if I would review the MedicTag.

The MedicTag is basically a 32mb USB flash drive that includes an AUTORUN.exe program that pops up to allow you to store and print medical history and information.

The flash drive looks like an ordinary USB drive, but it is made of White plastic with bold Red print. There is a attachment hole for the included lanyard strap if you want to wear the MedicTag.

A Red LED is built into one end of the drive. This LED blinks when data on the drive is accessed.

On the back of the drive, you will find a Lock switch. Flip this switch into the Lock position and you'll not be able to overwrite the medical data contained on the flash drive.

When you insert the MedicTag into a USB port on a Windows PC, it will automatically launch the autorun.exe program on the drive and within a few seconds, you'll see the popup window shown in the image above. The MedicTag interface is very simple and gives you 3 options. You can View emergency info, Print the emergency info or Exit the application.

When you click the View option, Microsoft Word will automatically launch and display a special document with fields that you can fill out with your personal medical information. The problem here is that you need Microsoft Word or a Microsoft Word compatible application that can load and edit Word (.DOC) files in order to access the medical data.

Click thumbnails to see full-size images

The special form that loads up in Word has a big Yellow box at the top where you can add important information regarding medical conditions. Since this is the first thing that anyone accessing the MedicTag will see, it's important to be as descriptive as possible. You can also see that there are fields for all the regular information that people will need to see, such as name, birthday, sex, address, phone number, etc. Scroll a bit farther down the form and there are fields for emergency contact numbers, physician contact info and medical insurance information.

Click thumbnails to see full-size images

Even farther down, there are fields to list your current prescriptions and medications. And even farther down, there are places to list allergies, existing conditions and surgeries. At the very bottom there is even a field that you can use to add any additional information that you deem necessary. As far as the information allowed, I think this form pretty much covers everything that any emergency medical technician, emergency room technician or hospital might need to know in the event that you were unable to relay that information yourself.

I really do wish that the folks that created the application and form would have made it a bit more computer generic than they have. The inclusion of the autorun.exe, MedicTag Windows based interface and .DOC (Word formatted form) can present a problem. Yes, I understand that most (if not all) EMTs and hospitals probably use Windows based computers, but the person that buys the MedicTag might not. This results in a bit of confusion when that person goes to initially add their information. As a Mac user myself, the first thing I did when I received the MedicTag was to pop it into a free USB port on my iMac. The result was a popup from Codeweaver's CrossOver Windows virtual machine software that I had only halfway installed on my machine. It told me it didn't know what to do with the autorun.exe. I then popped it into my Macbook Pro which was running Parallels Desktop (another Windows VM program). It kept giving me an error saying that a file was being used by another process and to kill the process and try again. Well crud... since I wasn't getting very far with 'fake' Windows machines, I decided to try it with my Acer Ferrari running Windows Vista. Finally I was able to launch the app, add my info and exit.

Click thumbnail to see full-size image

After I added my info and plugged the MedicTag back into my iMac, I opened the MedicTag Information.doc file directly by using TextEdit and it appeared as shown above (ugly isn't it?). It's interesting to note that the file was set to read-only and would not allow me to edit it. I was unable to edit it with NeoOffice as well. Plugging it back into another Windows XP machine with Word (my DualCor CPC), it allowed me to directly edit the .doc file. Go figure...

The ultimate question is: Is the MedicTag worth the ~$40 price tag? While I can't dispute the fact that this product is a good idea, I think you're mainly paying for the actual look of the product and not the functionality product. Being White with the Red +, it's easily noticeable to emergency personnel. But it's only 32mb and the application / form are not that useful for those of us that do not use the Windows OS. I think I'd rather just get a cheaper / bigger USB drive, put a label on it saying something like: Julie Strietelmeier's Medical Info and then on the drive save a generic .txt file with all my information that I can more easily edit and format however I would like.