Dr. Drang, writing about the Medication reminder feature in iOS:
After I got my pills entered into the app and set the time of day at which they should be taken, I enabled Notifications so I’d get an alarm and a persistent notice on my phone’s lock screen. This is where the app and I got crosswise. I usually didn’t have my phone with me when I took my pills, and even when I did, I’d often fail to tap the button in the app that marked them as taken and dismiss the notice. So later in the day I’d see the notice and question whether I’d failed to take the pills or just failed to mark that I’d taken the pills. The problem was that taking the pills—even the horse pill—was not so memorable that I’d know for sure that I’d done it a few hours earlier. I ended up questioning myself about the pills every week or so.
Is this related to the fact that I’m 62 years old? Probably, but I’ve always been a bit absent-minded (my wife would say more than a bit). And while I will certainly take the lion’s share of the blame for my inability to keep perfect track of my medications through the Health app, I doubt that I’m the only one who has trouble disciplining themself to mark their pills as taken as soon as they’re swallowed.
I love the solution he came up with for dealing with this, in fact it’s also been in use at my house for quite some time.