About Medication Timer: made by a dad in Adelaide

Medication Timer is a family medication app: as-needed timers, scheduled routines, temperatures, and health readings in one household hub. It is software on your phone, tablet, or computer.

Chris Winfield-Blum builds it in Adelaide as an independent project. The tagline on the site is honest: Made by a dad in Adelaide. The product exists because two stretches of family care made the same gap obvious. First, a sick household that could not trust its own notes. Later, a permanent heart-medication routine that had to live beside a child’s asthma plan, not on a blended list.

This page is the short story of why the app exists, what it is for, and what it will not pretend to be. The longer surgical chapter is already public: Why I Rebuilt Medication Timer: Coding Through a Heart Crisis.

Available on iOS, Android, and the web app.

A fever night that started it

The first version did not come from a product roadmap. Our son Jaxon got sick on a trip to visit family in Sydney. Before long the whole household had a horrible cold or flu. Suddenly we were trying to manage everybody’s paracetamol and ibuprofen at once: three people under the weather, caregivers who were also unwell, times that should have been written down, notes that were not updated.

We were juggling tablets, bottles and half-memories. Out of fear of giving too much, we almost certainly gave Jaxon too little. He sat with symptoms longer than he needed to, because we could not trust our own record of what had already been given and more importantly, when.

Plenty of apps could fire a timer. What they did not do well enough at 3 a.m. was the logistics that actually matter for as-needed medicine:

• Spacing and daily-maximum rules you set from the label, clinician, or pharmacist
• A clear picture of whether that interval has passed, or it is still too soon
• A shared log when more than one adult is involved, not a sticky note only one person remembers

Most medication reminder apps were built for one person on a fixed daily pill schedule. Our problem was the opposite: household as-needed dosing under brain fog.

So the first Medication Timer leaned into that gap. Log the dose when it happens. Count down from when it was actually given. Keep each family member separate. Put temperatures next to the dose history, so “how high was it this morning?” does not live in a different app or a group-chat scroll.

That is still the heart of Care and as-needed timers today.

A heart crisis that changed the vision

Then in 2025, life changed suddenly. A slight, unusual murmur. I felt fine. I got checked anyway because you should when it is something like your heart. Tests found a congenital faulty aortic valve that was actively failing. Surgery at the Royal Adelaide Hospital replaced it with a mechanical valve and repaired the aortic root.

Waking up with a mechanical valve meant a permanent routine, something that I had never had to manage in my life. I take Warfarin every day, most probably for the rest of my life, with INR readings that belong next to the dose log, not in a separate silo. Then there's my daily blood pressure tablets; a combination of 3 medications taken daily as well. Early recovery also meant my partner had to help coordinate care while I was fatigued and limited. Shouting across the house, or texting “did you take it?”, is not a system.

It was not only my recovery. Our son has asthma: daily preventers, symptom-based relievers, monitoring. Running cardiovascular recovery next to a child’s asthma plan inside a single non-collaborative list is how accidents happen. Then school viruses still arrive and hit everyone at once.

That is what drove the rebuild. Keep the sick-day timer. Grow it into a daily hub for a family’s collective health: Today for the calendar day, per-member profiles, scheduled dose routines, health readings with targets, optional Family Care so caregivers see the same picture, and family reports you can take to a clinician visit instead of scribbles and screenshots.

The app should make that fight a little lighter and clearer, whether the night is fever liquids or Warfarin beside INR. It still is not medical advice. It is organisation and scheduling built by someone who had to live both problems.

What Medication Timer is today

Put those two chapters together and the product thesis is simple. As-needed and scheduled are different jobs. Both matter. Confuse them and there are very real consequences for your family.

In practice, a household can use:

• As-needed (PRN) timers that count down from the logged dose against the interval you configured
• Dose routines for medicines that belong on a calendar (daily, weekly, monthly, custom, or after another medication is logged)
• Care as an illness workspace: timers, temperatures, symptoms, notes, and (on Family Care) short courses that end
• Health readings such as INR, blood pressure, and glucose beside doses on Today
• Glanceables where available: widgets, lock screen / Live Activities, and an experimental Apple Watch companion

For setup of calendar slots, see How to use medication routines. For a buying-guide view of the category, see Need a medication timer? What to look for in 2026.

Medication Timer does not sync to Apple Health or Google Health Connect today. Those hubs are useful personal dashboards. This app is a household organisation tool.

What we try to keep true

These are the principles the product is built around:

1. Built from our household logistics, not from a clinic SaaS brief.
2. As-needed and scheduled are different jobs. The app should not force one to pretend it is the other.
3. Shared truth beats group chat and fridge archaeology.
4. The app remembers the schedule you enter. It does not invent doses, strengths, or medical advice.
5. Free stays useful: unlimited family members and medications, with as-needed timers and Care as a core. Family Care is coordination and depth (shared caregivers, longer history, reports, courses), not a paywall on basic PRN timing. Price is shown in-store for your region.
6. We do not (and never will) sell health data.
7. When you are tired, the next action should be glanceable.

Chris is not a clinician. Depth of medical detail on this site is for context, not instructions. Always follow your clinician’s and pharmacist’s directions, and the label in your hand.

Who it is for

Medication Timer is for households that need more than a single-person alarm clock:

• Parents managing as-needed doses on a fever night, including when more than one adult is on duty
• Families running everyday tablets beside a child’s preventer or reliever
• Adults coordinating recovery or chronic routines with a partner, adult child, or support worker
• Anyone who wants dose history and readings in one place for a clinician visit

If you only need a physical prompt to take a tablet, a pill organiser or dispenser may be enough. Those are hardware. This is a medication timer app for who got what, and when. Many households use both.

Independent, from Adelaide

Medication Timer is a sole-trader project, founded in 2023, based in Mawson Lakes, Adelaide, South Australia. It runs on iOS, Android, and the web with the same household account.

That independence is a constraint and a promise. We cannot outspend large reminder apps on ads. What we can do is stay close to the two jobs that started this: sick-day as-needed timing, and the high-stakes daily hub that recovery demanded.

Questions, press, or partnership: Get in touch

Try it today

1. Open the web app, or download on iOS or Android.
2. Add the people in your household under Family.
3. Add medicines under Medications, matching the label you already follow.
4. Use an as-needed timer when the question is “when can we give this again?” Use a dose routine when the medicine belongs on a calendar. Start Care when someone is unwell.

Browse features or the help centre if you want the map before you tap.