If you are searching for an app to help your elderly mom, or your dad, manage their health, something specific probably happened. A pill bottle you had never heard of. An appointment that surfaced only after it was missed. A bill neither of you could decode. A doctor visit she summed up as "fine" when it clearly was not.

You are doing one of the most common and least supported jobs in America, and no app fixes it. But the right small setup takes real weight off: fewer surprises, less repeating the story to every new doctor, and no more photographing pill bottles in a hospital hallway.

There are genuinely useful apps for this, and this guide names them and sorts them by job. But the honest answer to your search has two parts, and the app is the second part. The first part is permission. Right now, most of the people who hold your mom's health information, her doctors, her patient portal, Medicare itself, are not allowed to talk to you. Until that changes, every app is decoration. The good news: fixing it is free, it mostly takes one signature or one phone call per door, and once it is done almost any tool works, including a paper notebook. (Full disclosure before anything else: Slothwise, the company behind this site, makes a health app that appears below with everything else. Every option gets a fair description.)

So this guide runs in that order: the free official setup first, then the apps by job, then how to use Medicare's own app library so you are not vetting strangers alone.

Build the system first: four permissions and two phone numbers

None of this happens over your mom's head. It starts with one conversation, and the framing matters: you are not taking over, you are making it possible to help when she wants help. Ask what she actually wants from you. Company at appointments? A second set of eyes on the medication list? Someone to untangle the bills? Write her answers down. They are the specification for everything below.

Make one medication list

Before any technology, make a single written list of every medication she takes: name, dose, what it is for, who prescribed it, plus the over-the-counter medicines and supplements, which interact with prescriptions more often than people expect. This one page prevents more harm than any feature in any app, because every doctor she sees is working partly blind without it. Bring it to every appointment. It can live in an app later; start in whatever format she will tolerate.

Put your name on file at every doctor's office

Federal privacy law is not actually the wall people assume. HIPAA explicitly allows a provider to share information with a family member involved in a patient's care, with the patient's agreement. Medicare's own fact sheet for family caregivers puts it plainly: the doctor must get your mom's permission to talk with you about her care, and once she gives it, the doctor can talk directly with you. Ask each office how they record that permission. Usually it is a short release form naming you, kept in her chart. Do it everywhere she is seen: primary care, every specialist, the pharmacy.

One more thing from that fact sheet that almost nobody knows: during a medically necessary appointment, Medicare Part B covers the time the doctor spends talking with you about her condition and treatment plan, even if she is not in the room, and the doctor cannot bill her or Medicare separately for that time. Talking to you is part of the visit, not an extra.

Get authorized with Medicare itself

Claims, coverage, and billing questions run through Medicare, and Medicare needs her permission before it will discuss her information with you. There are two official ways. The quick one: she gives verbal permission while the two of you are on the phone with 1-800-MEDICARE together, which works for that call. The durable one: she names you an authorized representative by filing the Authorization to Disclose Personal Health Information form, also known as CMS-10106. Submitted online through her own Medicare account, it takes effect immediately; the printed-and-mailed version generally takes a few weeks to process. The line itself, 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227), answers 24 hours a day, including weekends, with TTY at 1-877-486-2048.

Get proxy access to her patient portals

Most health systems run a patient portal, and at most large ones that portal is Epic's MyChart. The official mechanism for family is called proxy access: your own login, connected to her account with her consent, showing you what she has agreed to share, such as test results, visit summaries, messages, and appointments. MyChart's help pages say to start in the Sharing Hub inside her MyChart account, where she can invite you or you can request access, and they note that every organization has its own rules, so if the Sharing Hub route is not available the front desk can provide their proxy form. If she is seen across two or three health systems, repeat it at each one.

Do not share passwords, not even with her blessing

Here is the trap almost every family falls into: it feels efficient to skip all of the above and just log in as her. Do not. Her Medicare account and her portal logins belong to her verified identity, not to her household, and every official channel in this guide exists precisely so that you never need her password. Logging in as her can trip security checks and lock the account, erases any record that you were authorized to act, and quietly removes her from decisions that are still hers. The same rule applies to health apps: if an app offers a caregiver, family, or sharing feature, use that, never a shared login. One person, one login, always. She signs in as herself; you come through the front door built for you.

Add the humans: SHIP and the Eldercare Locator

Two free services carry more weight than any app in this article. The State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) gives free, unbiased, one-on-one Medicare counseling through local programs in every state, and it is for families as well as beneficiaries: coverage questions, plan comparisons, bills that make no sense. The national line, 877-839-2675, connects you to your state's program. The Eldercare Locator, a public service of the federal Administration for Community Living, connects older adults and their families to local services through Area Agencies on Aging: meals, rides, in-home help, caregiver support. Call or text 1-800-677-1116, or chat online. Put both numbers in your phone now.

A note on power of attorney

Everything above works while your mom can speak for herself, and none of it requires a power of attorney. A POA is a different tool: legal authority for the day she cannot decide for herself, and health care and financial versions are separate documents. It is a conversation with a lawyer, ideally one who works in elder law, and it is worth having while it is still easy. This article cannot give legal advice, and no app replaces that document.

What kind of app actually helps

"Health app for elderly parent" covers four different jobs, and no app does all four well. Decide which one is actually failing in your family:

• The medication job. Right pills, right time, and someone finds out when doses are missed.

• The coordination job. Siblings, neighbors, and friends knowing who is driving Tuesday, what changed this week, and what needs doing.

• The records job. Records, claims, the medication list, and "what did the doctor actually say," in one place, with answers in plain language.

• The logistics job. Finding doctors who take her coverage and getting appointments booked.

Most families need one app from the first or third job, and, once more than two people are helping, one from the second.

Two money notes before the profiles. Medicare's paper trail is checkable by hand, and our guide to reading a Medicare Summary Notice shows how; apps that import claims put those statements in one place instead of a shoebox. And if your parent's income is limited, the help most families never claim matters more than any app: our guide to having Medicare and Medicaid together covers the programs that pay Medicare premiums and the bills that should never arrive at all.

For medication reminders: Medisafe

Medisafe is the best-known medication reminder app, and for this single job it is hard to beat. It is free to download, it handles complicated dosing schedules, it reminds about refills, it flags drug-to-drug interactions to review with her providers, and it can send a medication report to the doctor before a visit. The feature that matters for you is family tracking: in its own words, you can track a loved one's medications, measurements, and appointments in one place and know when they miss a dose. Her phone does the reminding, yours does the noticing, and nobody has to nag at dinner. Our six-app comparison covers it fairly alongside the broader field.

The honest caveat: it only works if she carries a charged smartphone and answers its nudges. If that is not your mom, do not force it: keep the paper list current, ask her pharmacist about packaging options, and let the reminders be human ones.

For coordinating the helpers: Caring Village and Lotsa Helping Hands

These two solve the same problem at different radii: not her health data, but her people.

Caring Village is a shared hub for the inner circle: a care calendar, messaging, and to-do lists, with medication reminders, a wellness journal, and document folders on its paid plans. The free tier covers two people; a family of three siblings and mom will need the paid Circle plan, currently $14.99 a month on its pricing page. If everyone currently gets a different version of the truth by phone, this puts the whole family in the same room.

Lotsa Helping Hands is for the wider circle: friends, neighbors, the congregation. You post a care calendar, and people sign themselves up for meals, rides to appointments, and errands, with announcements and well wishes alongside. It is the working answer to "let me know how I can help," which otherwise stays a kind sentence.

For records, claims, and "what did the doctor say": start at the Medicare App Library

Keep the portals; they are the official channel to each care team. The fix for scattered portals is not replacing them, it is adding one place that sees everything. The records job is also where picking apps from an app-store search gets uncomfortable, because the app you choose will hold her medical history. This is exactly the problem the Medicare App Library exists to solve. Every app listed there has been independently verified to meet standards for protecting and exchanging health information, builds in identity verification, can only access the Medicare data she chooses to share, and is barred from selling or sharing her data. Worth being clear about, as our guide to the library also notes: a listing is not an endorsement, no app is ever required, and her benefits do not change either way. But as a shortlist, it beats a search box.

As of August 2026, the library lists 22 fully available apps, and the useful move for a caregiver is to look for the key feature tag "Share information with caregivers or providers." Among the fully available apps whose listings speak most directly to caregiving: haau3, a web app built for patients and family caregivers to gather records and share them with providers and loved ones; HealthScores.AI, which describes helping Medicare beneficiaries organize, understand, and securely share medical information with caregivers and providers; HealthTree, built around cancer care first (its listing notes it serves other conditions too); The Well app, a portable record your parent builds once and can share with any provider; and Slothwise, made by the company behind this site, which the next section covers. Rounding out the jobs, WhatMeds keeps her prescription list pulled straight from Medicare if she has Part D or Medicare Advantage drug coverage, and Zocdoc handles finding and booking doctors. One more is coming: Polygon Health, built around connecting patients and caregivers, is listed as almost ready.

The library's own page lets you filter apps by feature, health condition, and price. For plain-English profiles of every listed app, our complete guide to the Medicare App Library walks through all of them.

Set it up without taking over

Two principles keep the whole arrangement healthy. First, your parent stays in control: connections to her Medicare information or medical records get approved by her, through a secure sign-in and identity check she completes herself, ideally with you sitting alongside. Here is what that check looks like, so neither of you is surprised. This is the same reason for the no-passwords rule above: every one of these tools has a front door built for you, and using it keeps her in charge of her own health life.

Second, pick the smallest setup that solves your actual problem. One medication app plus the portals is a complete answer for many families. The signal to consolidate into a one-place app is when you notice you have become the integration layer: copying between apps, retelling the history to every new doctor, reconciling papers by hand.

How can Slothwise help you look after a parent?

Suppose you do everything above. The permissions exist, the binder exists, and then real life resumes: the medication list drifts after one hospital visit, records pile up in three portals, and the question you actually have on a Tuesday night is small, specific, and not worth a phone tree. That upkeep is the job Slothwise was built for. Its Medicare App Library card describes it directly: by text or in the app, it helps you manage your health and your loved ones' too, organizing records, claims, medications, symptoms, wearable readings, and everyday tracking, and letting you ask questions about that information and get a plain answer. It is built to hold a loved one's health alongside your own, so your mom's medication list and visit preparation live next to yours instead of in a separate system you maintain by hand. It works entirely over text messages as well as in the app, which matters on the days when caregiving happens from a grocery line. Her part can be as small as texting a photo of a new pill bottle, which simply shows up organized. It is listed as fully available in the Medicare App Library, and it is free to start, with optional paid features.

Slothwise is one option, not the only one: if medications are the whole job, Medisafe does that well; the portals stay the official channel to every care team; the free official layer above works with no app at all, and a paper binder plus Medicare's authorization form has done this job for decades. The Medicare App Library's filters let you weigh every caregiver-friendly app so you can choose with clear eyes.

Common questions

Can I talk to Medicare on my mom's behalf?

Yes, once she gives permission. For a single call, she can give verbal permission while you are both on the line with 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227). For standing permission, she files the Authorization to Disclose Personal Health Information form, which she can submit online through her own Medicare account for immediate effect, or by mail, which generally takes a few weeks. Have her Medicare card handy when you call.

Do we need power of attorney to get started?

No. The doctor's-office releases, the Medicare authorization form, and portal proxy access all work without one, whenever your mom can give permission herself. A power of attorney covers the different and harder situation where she cannot. It is worth arranging with an elder law attorney before it is needed, and it is a legal document, not an app feature. Nothing here is legal advice.

What if my mom will never use an app?

Then she never has to touch one. The coordination apps live on your phone, not hers. For the records apps, she will need to be present for the setup, because connecting her Medicare information happens through her own secure sign-in, and that is a kitchen-table afternoon, not a new habit. After that, the caregiver side does the daily work. Several library apps run in an ordinary web browser with nothing to install, and Slothwise, covered above, works over regular text messages, so her side can be a text and nothing more. And a paper binder with the medication list, the provider list, and notes from each visit is not a failure to modernize. It is a system, and a good one.

We live in different states. Does any of this still work?

Yes. Portal proxy access, Medicare phone authorization, records apps, missed-dose alerts, and text messages are all distance-proof. That is most of the point.

What about emergencies?

Apps organize; they do not respond. Keep the emergency basics separate and simple: a current medication list your mom can hand over, and 911 for anything urgent.

Does it matter that she has a Medicare Advantage plan?

For the library's record apps, somewhat. As our guide to the library notes, apps that connect to Medicare information can see Part D prescription drug information, but Part A and Part B information for Medicare Advantage members lives with the plan, so check what the plan's own app or portal offers. Everything else in this article works the same either way.

Is there a version of this guide for the person themselves?

Yes: our guide to organizing records, medications, and bills on Medicare walks the same ground from your mom's own side.

The short version

Permission first: a release on file at every doctor's office, the Medicare authorization form, proxy access to her portals, and never a shared password. Free humans second: SHIP for Medicare questions, and the Eldercare Locator at 1-800-677-1116 for meals, rides, and in-home help. Then, and only then, pick apps by job: a medication reminder app if pills are the problem, a family coordination app once several people are helping, and a records app from the Medicare App Library's caregiver-tagged shortlist for everything on paper and in portals. Keep your mom in control of her own connections, and keep the setup as small as the problem allows. The app is the assistant. The system, and the person running it, is the plan. That person is you, and after the first week of setup, the job gets lighter.

Slothwise is not affiliated with or endorsed by Medicare, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or any government agency, and does not sell, endorse, or recommend any Medicare plan. This article is general information, not legal, financial, or medical advice. For questions about your specific coverage, contact 1-800-MEDICARE, your State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP), or a qualified professional. Last updated: August 2026.