Frequently asked questions

DoseStreaks is a South African health companion for keeping track of your medication and your health. It groups your medicines into the times of day you actually take them, reminds you when each one is due, keeps a record of what you took, and turns that record into a growing garden and a doctor-ready report.

It also carries a free health library, a South African medicine formulary and the national emergency numbers.

Yes. Every feature is free to use — dose tracking, reminders, vitals, appointments, the wellness garden, your Health Team, the report export and the health guides. There is no paid tier, no trial that expires and nothing to buy inside the app.

For the app itself, yes. An account is what syncs your medications and history to your other devices and lets you get everything back if you lose or replace your phone.

The public parts need no account at all: the health library, the emergency numbers page and the legal pages are readable by anyone.

DoseStreaks runs in any modern browser on a phone, tablet or computer, and can be installed to your home screen so it opens like an app and works offline.

The app interface is available in the 11 written official South African languages: English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, isiXhosa, isiNdebele, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda and Xitsonga. You choose one when you start and can change it at any time in Settings.

Health and medicine information stays in English, so the clinical detail is only ever read in the version that was checked.

Instead of one long list, your medicines are grouped into the moments of your day — pre-breakfast, morning, lunch, dinner, bedtime, a slot you can name yourself, and an as-needed slot. Each medicine appears in whichever sessions you take it in, and you log each one as you take it.

Yes, within a window. A session opens 30 minutes before its scheduled time and stays open for 3 hours after it, so a dose you took but forgot to record is easy to catch up on.

Outside that window the session is closed. That is deliberate: your adherence figures, streaks and garden are all built from these logs, so being able to tick off a dose at any hour would let the numbers describe a day that never happened.

Those go in the as-needed slot. It has no scheduled time and never counts as missed — a painkiller you did not need is not a lapse, so it can never pull your adherence, your streak or your garden down.

Each session has a default reminder time that you can change, and you can also give an individual medicine its own time. You can turn reminders off per session.

DoseStreaks can also remind you when a medicine is running low, based on the stock count and threshold you set for it.

It is a picture of your adherence. You choose a plant, and it grows through 9 stages from seed to full bloom as you take your doses. There are 6 plants to choose from, all South African favourites or well-known garden species.

Growth is deliberately slow to earn and quicker to lose — a perfect day adds to the current stage and a fully missed day takes off roughly twice as much, so a plant in bloom means a habit that actually held.

No other DoseStreaks user, and nobody you have not invited. Your medications, doses, vitals and appointments are stored on your own device and synced to your own account, where the database itself keeps each record readable only by that account. Anyone you add to your Health Team sees only the parts you tick.

Running the service does mean access to the infrastructure behind it exists, kept to what is needed to operate it and fix faults. We do not sell your health information or share it with advertisers.

Exactly what you tick, and nothing else. When you invite a family member, carer or healthcare professional you choose per person whether they can see your medicine names, full medicine details, adherence, vitals and appointments, and whether they may send you a check-in.

You can change those permissions or remove the person entirely at any time, and the change reaches their device too.

Yes, once you are signed in. Your medications and history live on the device, so you can open the app, check what is due and log a dose with no data connection at all. Everything syncs the next time you are online.

Yes, at any time, from Settings. Deleting your account permanently erases your profile, medications, dose history, vitals, appointments, Health Team links and garden from the servers — it is a real deletion, not a hidden flag, and it cannot be undone.

No. DoseStreaks records and reminds. It does not diagnose, prescribe, or tell you to start, stop or change a medicine or a dose.

The health guides are general information for a South African audience, drawn from official sources such as the National Department of Health's Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines List, SEMDSA, SAHA, SAHPRA and the NICD. Always follow the directions on your own label and speak to your doctor, pharmacist or clinic.

South African law restricts the advertising of medicine prices, so DoseStreaks does not display them anywhere and has no price comparison or pharmacy finder. You will not find a price on any page of this site or in the app.

Do not rely on an app. Call 10177 for an ambulance, or 112 from any mobile phone. The emergency numbers page lists these along with the police, the poison information helpline and the SADAG mental-health crisis line, and it works without an account or a signed-in session.