I originally built Protocol Pilot for myself, to keep track of a complicated medication trial that involved slowly ramping up my dosing and keeping track of side effects & my resulting experience (hopefully, improvements). It was really helpful, and as I used it I added in a bunch of other features to make it easier to track things. I also realized that sometimes I wouldn’t want to have a day that followed the next level of the plan, or was in a different order, etc, so I ended up making the app more flexible to allow me to log what I did however I did it.

I mentioned it to a friend who was curious if it would work for her purpose (trying a taper – the opposite of what I was doing – of a different medication), so I added a few more features and put it into TestFlight. (If you want to try it, you can! Send me an email to Dana+ProtocolPilot@OpenAPS.org or message me wherever you usually talk to me, and I can send you the link to download it.)

I’ve been surprised at how useful Protocol Pilot has been, for several different use cases I’ve had over the years, and maybe some of these match your experiences, too:

• Have you ever taken an over-the-counter medication and then, a few hours later, tried to remember exactly when you took it?This may be because you have a new injury and you’re trying to stay on top of pain meds or because sometimes you take things regularly (like during your menstrual cycle) but the rest of the time you don’t have to remember to take it at all, because you don’t need it.
• You need to start a new medication that is known for gastrointestinal (or other) side effects and want to slowly increase your dosing over time to minimize risk of side effects.
• You are ready to stop taking a medication but you can’t just suddenly stop it, you need to slowly decrease the dose over time.

With Protocol Pilot, you can do all of those things. You can add a medication like Tylenol (acetominophen) or Ibuprofen and log when you take it, when you need it. This way, you can keep track of when you took your last dose. You can also set up a plan, whether that’s increasing or decreasing a med, to help you track as you progress through those different dose changes.

You can log side effects or notes related to your dosing, or none at all. You can also schedule reminders to check in and log how you’re doing overall, however you want to rate that.

This is all useful because “how has it been going?” and “is this working?” can be hard to answer against everything else you’ve got going on in life, if you don’t have a convenient way that works for you to track it. Protocol Pilot has become the way that works for me – and a few others – to track things. If you want to try it yourself, email me (Dana+ProtocolPilot@OpenAPS.org) and I can give you the (iOS) TestFlight link to try it. And if you try it – I’d love feedback and also feature requests for what would make this helpful for YOUR use case, if it doesn’t hit the spot in the way it’s currently designed.