SOS (emergencies) · CarePilot User Guide

The SOS screen gathers in one single place the medical details of the person you care for and the buttons for calling for help. Open it once now, calmly, so that you know where it is on the day you need it.

How to open SOS

Tap the SOS button

Open Today — the app’s first screen — and tap the red SOS button emergency at the top. The «Emergency» screen opens.

The medical information at a glance

Read the care recipient's profile

Right at the top is what an emergency service usually asks about. You can read it out loud, or hold the phone out to the paramedic:

Name and age.
Blood type, weight, emergency phone number and family contact.
Allergies (in red) and conditions (in orange).
Current medication.
Insurance number and address, if you have filled them in.

Medical profile on the emergency screen

Calling for help

Call the emergency services

Tap the big red «Emergency» button call. It has written on it the number it is going to call: your country’s emergency number, which is 911 in the United States and 112 across Europe.

If you would rather it called somewhere else — their health center, the care home — fill in «Emergency phone» in the care recipient’s profile: that number takes precedence over the country’s one.

Or call the family

Tap «Call family» phone to dial, with a single tap, the family or trusted contact number you have saved in the profile.

The phone's dialer with the family number already entered

Choose your phone:

Android

The dialer opens with the number entered: tap the green call button.

iPhone

A confirmation box appears with the number: tap «Call».

Saying where you are

This is useful for guiding an ambulance that cannot find the doorway, or for raising the alarm from the street.

Check and share your location

Tap «Show where I am now» my_location. The first time, the phone will ask you for permission, which is the next step; from then on you will see your address and your coordinates on screen, ready to read out loud.

As soon as there is an address, that button gives way to «Share location» share, which sends it by WhatsApp, text message or whatever you use, with a link that opens the map at the exact spot. Until you tap that button, nothing is sent to anybody.

The first time, grant the permission

This notice is shown by the phone, not by CarePilot. Choose «Precise», which is the one that gives the street and the number.

Both «While using the app» and «Only this time» work; with the second one it will ask you again next time.

The system dialog asking for location permission

Refresh it if you have moved

Below the address you will see what time it was taken and with what margin of error. After two minutes that line turns amber and warns you: «Taken at 12:52 PM — this may no longer be where you are · accuracy ±5 m».

It is worth looking at that time, because the position may already be an old one: indoors or in a basement the GPS sometimes cannot get a fresh reading, and the app falls back on the last one the phone had stored. That is better than nothing at all, but it helps to know how old it is.

To take it again, tap the circular arrows icon refresh to the right of that line: once there is an address on screen, that is the only way to refresh it.

The time and accuracy line, with the amber out-of-date location warning

If the location does not appear

The card tells you what is happening and what to do

If you said no to the permission — or you cannot remember — the card explains it right there and offers you two buttons: «Open settings», which takes you straight to where it is changed, and «Retry».

If the permission has been granted but the GPS is slow, the app waits a few seconds and then falls back on the last position the phone had stored. Only if there is not one either will it say «Couldn’t get your location. Check that GPS is enabled», and then it really is time to check that it is switched on and tap «Retry».

The card when permission has been denied, with «Open settings» and «Retry»

Your location, and why you can rest easy

CarePilot does not track anybody. We do not follow the position of any phone or any person, neither while you are using the app nor when you close it. There is no screen, on any plan, from which anyone can see where you are.

That location never leaves your phone. It is worked out inside it, it is shown to you, and there it stays: it is not sent to our servers, it is not stored anywhere and nobody else in the group sees it. Not even we can look it up, because it never leaves your device. Even turning the coordinates into a street name is done by the phone itself, with what it already comes with.

Nor does it switch itself on: the GPS is only consulted at the moment you tap the button, not when you open the screen. The only thing that can appear without being asked for is the last position the phone had already stored on its own, which belongs to the phone and not to CarePilot. And when you leave, it is forgotten, so next time the card will be blank again.

The only way for that location to reach anybody is for you to share it yourself, by hand, with «Share location», and then it goes wherever you choose — WhatsApp, a message, a phone call — and not through CarePilot.

Quite apart from all this, when you call the emergency services your phone sends your location to them on its own (it is a phone feature called AML, not a feature of this app), even if you never get to explain where you are.