Why one copy is not enough

The American Red Cross tells people to keep emergency contact information both in writing and saved on their phones, and to make a card for every member of the household in case people are separated. That advice was written for disasters, but it applies just as well to a medical emergency that happens to one person.

Consider what each copy does. A wallet card works when your phone is dead, locked, lost, or in another room. It also works when a bystander is helping and has no idea how to find medical information on a stranger's phone. A phone medical ID works when you are out without your wallet, and on both major phone platforms it can be read from the lock screen without a passcode. A refrigerator copy works when an ambulance crew arrives at your home and you cannot speak for yourself, which is the situation the Vial of Life program was created for. Its instructions place a medical information form in a plastic bag on the refrigerator door, with a decal on the front door at eye level so that responders know to look.

If you live alone, the refrigerator copy matters most. If you spend your days out and about, the wallet and phone copies do.

What belongs on the card

There is no single official list of what an emergency card should contain. The Red Cross card holds contacts and addresses only. Phone medical IDs hold conditions, medicines, allergies, and contacts. The Vial of Life form asks about health and medicines. MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine's consumer health site, advises people to keep written lists of all allergies and of every medicine, herb, vitamin, and supplement they take. Putting those sources together, here is a practical set of fields.

1. 1 Your full legal name, as it appears on your insurance card, and your date of birth. Emergency staff use these to pull up your records.
2. 2 Your medical conditions, in plain words. Write "high blood pressure" rather than a code, and include heart, kidney, stroke, or diabetes history if you have any. Add any implanted device, such as a pacemaker.
3. 3 Every medicine you take, with the dose, how often you take it, and roughly when during the day. Include prescription medicines, nonprescription medicines you use regularly, and any vitamin or supplement, because emergency health care professionals need the complete picture to avoid interactions.
4. 4 Allergies, including what happened when you were exposed. "Penicillin: rash" tells a health care professional more than "penicillin" alone.
5. 5 Blood type, if you know it. Android's emergency information section includes a field for it, and Apple's Medical ID does as well.
6. 6 Your primary care health care professional's name and office phone number, plus any specialist you see regularly, such as a cardiologist or kidney doctor.
7. 7 Your pharmacy's name and phone number. A pharmacy can confirm current prescriptions if your list is out of date.
8. 8 Two emergency contacts with phone numbers and their relationship to you. The Red Cross recommends that one of them live outside your area, for reasons explained below.
9. 9 Whether you have an advance directive (a document that records your wishes about treatment or names someone to make decisions for you) and where the copy is kept.
10. 10 The date you last updated the card.

Some people also add their health insurance plan and member number, a preferred hospital, and a line about organ donation. None of these is required, and a card that is too crowded is harder to read. A wallet card has two sides. If your list runs long, the medicine list can go on a separate folded sheet behind the card, with a note on the card that says where to find it.

Getting the medicine list right

Of everything on the card, the medicine list does the most work in an emergency and goes out of date the fastest. It deserves the most care.

Start with the containers rather than memory. Line up every bottle, box, and inhaler you use, including the ones you take only occasionally, and copy the name and strength exactly as printed. For each one, add how many you take and how often. Pharmacies can usually print your current prescription list, which is a helpful cross check but will not include anything you buy over the counter.

Write both the brand name and the generic name if the label shows both. Emergency staff may know the medicine by one and not the other, and the same medicine can be sold under different brand names.

Add a line for when you took your last dose. You will not fill this in ahead of time, but a blank labeled "last dose taken" reminds you or a family member to jot down the time before the ambulance arrives. For blood pressure medicines in particular, knowing whether a dose was taken an hour ago or missed for two days helps the emergency team interpret the readings they see.

While you are building the list, use it to settle a question that comes up for almost everyone: what should you do if you miss a dose of a blood pressure medicine? The answer depends on the medicine and on you, so ask your health care professional or pharmacist ahead of time and write their answer on the list. Having it in writing means you are not guessing on a bad day. The same goes for any medicine with special instructions, such as one that should be paused before a procedure.

Choosing your emergency contacts

An emergency contact does two jobs. The first is obvious: someone reaches them and tells them what has happened. The second is less obvious and more useful. A good contact can answer questions about you when you cannot, which means they need to know more than your phone number.

The Red Cross suggests naming one contact who lives outside your area. Its reasoning is that during a widespread emergency, local phone lines can be overloaded or knocked out, and a long distance call or text may go through when a local one does not. For a personal medical emergency the same person is a backup when your local contact is unreachable.

Before you write someone's name on the card, have a short conversation with them. Cover these points.

1. 1 Tell them they are listed, and ask whether they are comfortable with that.
2. 2 Give them a copy of your medicine list and condition list, on paper or as a photo on their phone.
3. 3 Tell them the name of your primary care office and your pharmacy.
4. 4 If you have an advance directive or have named someone to make health decisions for you, tell them who that person is and where the documents are.
5. 5 Confirm that their number is saved in your phone as an emergency contact, not only in your regular contacts, so the phone's emergency features can use it.

That last point matters more than it sounds. On an iPhone, once emergency contacts are set up in Medical ID, calling an emergency number prompts the phone to send those contacts a notice that you called for help, along with your location. Android phones offer emergency contact features through the Personal Safety app. These features only work for people you have entered in the right place.

If you are a care partner, this section runs in both directions. The person you care for should have you listed, and you should carry a card of your own that names someone who can step in if you are the one who is hurt.

Setting up the medical ID on your phone

Phone medical IDs are worth the ten minutes they take, because paramedics can read them without entering your passcode. The steps below reflect the current Apple and Google instructions as of early 2026. Menus change with software updates, so if a step does not match what you see, search the support site for your phone for "medical ID" or "emergency information."

On an iPhone, open the Health app, tap Summary, tap your profile picture in the corner, and choose Medical ID. Fill in your conditions, medications, allergies, and emergency contacts. Two switches deserve attention. "Show When Locked" lets anyone see your Medical ID from the lock screen, which is the whole point. "Share During Emergency Call" allows the phone to send your medical information to emergency services when you call or text 911 in the United States. Apple's support page describes Medical ID as a way for first responders to reach your critical medical information from the lock screen without your passcode.

On an Android phone running Android 12 or later, open the Safety app (Google calls it Personal Safety), tap "Your info," and add your medical information, including blood type, allergies, and medications, along with emergency contacts. Under "Emergency info access," turn on "Show when locked." A responder can then swipe up on the locked screen, tap "Emergency," and tap "View emergency info." Google notes that some steps work only on Android 12 and up, and phone makers vary the menus, so an older or customized phone may look different.

If you cannot get the medical ID feature to work, a low tech workaround is to set your lock screen image to a picture that shows an emergency contact name and number. Anyone who picks up the phone can read it.

The refrigerator copy

The Vial of Life Project sells a kit of two decals and one medical information form for 5 dollars with free shipping, and it also offers the form as a free printable download for people who create an account. You do not need the official kit. A copy of your wallet card contents, printed in large type and slipped into a clear plastic bag or sheet protector on the refrigerator door, does the same job. The decal is the part that is hard to improvise, because it tells a crew walking in the door that the information exists. A bright, clearly labeled envelope reading "Emergency medical information" on the front door and the refrigerator works if you do not have a decal.

The refrigerator copy is a good place for the longer version of your information: the full medicine list, the name of every health care professional you see, your insurance details, and a copy of your advance directive or a note about where it is. Because it stays at home, it can be a full page rather than a card.

If you have a home blood pressure monitor, keep your reading log nearby. It helps an ambulance crew or emergency health care professional see what is normal for you, since a reading of 170/100 mm Hg means something different in a person whose home average is 125/78 than in someone who has run 160/95 for months. A separate article in this series covers how to describe a concerning reading when you call your care team.

Numbers and notes worth adding

Two phone numbers earn a spot on the card beyond your contacts and health care professionals.

1. 1 The Poison Help line, 1 800 222 1222, connects to your local poison center 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in more than 100 languages. It is the right call if you or a family member accidentally takes a double dose or the wrong medicine. The program's own advice is not to wait for symptoms before calling. If the person is not breathing, call 911 instead. The Red Cross card already prints this number.
2. 2 Your care team's after hours line, if the practice has one. Many offices forward calls to a nurse or health care professional on call, and some health plans run a nurse advice line as well. Having the number written down saves a search at midnight.

Two reminders also belong on the card, written in your own words so they are ready when you need them. The first is the American Heart Association's rule for very high readings: a reading of 180/120 mm Hg or higher together with chest pain, shortness of breath, back pain, numbness or weakness, a change in vision, or difficulty speaking means call 911 without waiting to see whether the numbers come down. The same reading without symptoms means recheck after at least 1 minute and contact your care team as soon as possible. A separate article in this series explains this guidance in full.

The second reminder is simple and easy to forget in the moment: note the time symptoms started. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises this for stroke because treatment decisions depend on how long symptoms have been present, and the same is true for heart attack. A blank line on the card labeled "symptoms began at" gives you or a family member a place to write it.

Keeping the card current

A card that lists a medicine you stopped six months ago, or misses one you started last week, can send an emergency team in the wrong direction. Certain events should trigger an update to all three copies on the same day.

1. 1 Any change to a medicine: a new prescription, a stopped medicine, or a dose change.
2. 2 A new diagnosis or a procedure such as a stent or pacemaker.
3. 3 A new health care professional, a new pharmacy, or a new phone number for either.
4. 4 A new allergy or a reaction to a medicine.
5. 5 A change in your emergency contacts or their phone numbers.

Between those events, refill day is a natural checkpoint. When a new bottle arrives, glance at the card and confirm the entry still matches the label. Write the date of the latest update on the card itself, because a dated card tells a health care professional how much to trust it.

Keep a digital master copy on your computer or phone so that reprinting takes two minutes. When you update the master, replace the wallet card, update the phone medical ID, and print a fresh refrigerator page. Then throw away the old versions, so that no one finds an outdated list in a drawer during the one moment it matters.