Why Medmento

Our philosophy

The thinking behind Medmento

Every app makes choices. Some are inherited — copied from whatever worked for someone else's product, adapted without much thought. Others are made deliberately, shaped by the people who will actually use the thing, and by an understanding of what's at stake.

Medmento grew out of Medmonitor, an app developed in collaboration with Nasjonalforeningen for folkehelsen — Norway's national public health association. It was built alongside families living with illness, people with dementia, and the carers who support them. That collaboration shaped not just the features we included, but the ones we chose to leave out.

The features we built matter. But some of the most important decisions we made were about what not to build — and why.

Here's the thinking behind those choices, and where Medmento fits in a person's life.

No streaks

Many habit apps use streaks — a counter that tracks consecutive days of use, creating a sense of momentum that's hard to break. They're everywhere: Duolingo, fitness trackers, meditation apps. They work, in the narrow sense that they keep people coming back.

We chose not to include them, and that choice was deliberate. Here's why.

Streaks work by exploiting loss aversion. Once you've built up a 47-day streak, breaking it feels like losing something you own, not just skipping a day. That's a powerful mechanic — and in a medicine app, the failure mode is worse than in other categories. Missing a Duolingo day costs you nothing real. Missing a dose can matter medically. A streak mechanic implicitly frames "streak broken" as the bad outcome, when the actual bad outcome is "missed medication." Those aren't the same thing, and conflating them is misleading.

Streaks also punish exactly the wrong people. They reward those who are already consistent. The people who most need support are the ones with irregular routines, memory issues, depression, chaotic schedules — and for them, a broken streak is just another small shame spiral, not motivation.

There's also the question of what the research actually says. Behaviour-change studies suggest that guilt-based mechanics reduce engagement over time^1,2 for health-critical tasks, because people disengage from the app entirely rather than face the "you failed" framing. That's the opposite of what a medication reminder should do.

And perhaps most importantly: streaks are a growth-metric import, not a health-outcome design. They got popularised because they're great for engagement and retention numbers — they weren't designed with clinical adherence in mind. Borrowing them uncritically into a medicine app is optimising for the wrong thing.

Supporting carers, not replacing them

Many medication apps include a "carer dashboard" — a screen where a family member or nurse can log in and check whether someone took their medication. It sounds helpful. In practice, we heard something different from the people who use these apps.

When someone is still living independently, managing their own medication is part of that independence. It's a small daily ritual that says: I'm still in control of this part of my life. A dashboard that lets someone else check on that — even with the best intentions — can change the dynamic. The person being monitored may feel watched. They may stop feeling ownership over something that was theirs to manage.

Worse, remote dashboards can create a false sense of security. The data in them is only as reliable as the app that collects it — and when it comes to someone's health, that's a risk no family should take lightly. A phone call from a daughter, a visit from a neighbour, a pharmacist who asks how things are going — these are the interactions that keep people connected, and no dashboard can replace them.

Medmento doesn't have remote monitoring, and that's deliberate. We want the app to support the person using it — not manage them. And we want the people who care about that person to stay involved in the way that actually matters: through real, human contact. The app helps someone stay independent longer, which is itself a gift to the carers who love them.

Really free

"Free" has become a flexible word in software. Many apps are free to download and then quietly cap the number of medications you can add, or move the features you need behind a subscription. Some offer a free trial that expires just as you're starting to rely on the thing.

Medmento is free — actually free, with no cap and no hidden tier. Every feature is available from the moment you open the app. We chose this because medication adherence shouldn't be something you have to pay extra for, and because people living with chronic conditions shouldn't have to evaluate whether a feature is "worth it" when the feature is keeping them healthy.

Your data is nobody's business

This is health data. Not browsing preferences, not shopping habits — information about what medication you take, when, and how consistently. It's the kind of thing that, in the wrong hands, could affect your insurance, your employment, your privacy in ways you can't predict.

Most apps store this data on their servers, where it sits in a database alongside thousands of other people's information. And those servers may be in a country you've never thought about — governed by legal frameworks you have no say in, accessible to authorities you've never heard of. The privacy policies are often written in dense language that obscures all of this. Your medication list is sitting somewhere you can't see, in a place you can't choose.

In Medmento, your medication list stays on your own device, encrypted with AES 256-bit encryption. We never ask who you are. We never see your data. It's nobody's business but yours — and that's not a slogan, it's the architecture.

Memory games

Medmento includes memory games that you can play when you confirm your medication. The idea is simple: give you a small reason to open the app regularly, and use that moment to also do something that can support your cognitive health.

For people in the early to moderate stages of conditions that affect memory, regular cognitive exercise may help maintain function. The games are there when you want them — not required, not tracked with guilt, just available as part of the daily routine of taking your medication.

When is Medmento right for you?

Medmento was designed for a specific stage of life: the stage where a person is still living independently, managing their own routines, and making their own decisions — but where a reliable tool for medication reminders, cognitive engagement, and health tracking can make the difference between staying independent and needing to give that up.

It's not for everyone. Someone who doesn't take medication may not need it. Someone who requires hands-on daily care may need something more. But for the people in between — and there are many of them — having a tool that respects their autonomy while supporting their health is exactly what matters.

If you're evaluating options — whether it's Medmento or something else — our guide to choosing a medication reminder app walks through the questions that actually matter.

Medmento fits here

Timeline showing where Medmento fits in the progression from healthy to full care

That's who we built Medmento for. People who want to live as normally as long as possible — and who want a tool that helps them do that, without guilt or surveillance.

These aren't ideas we invented. They come from working alongside the people who use this app — through Nasjonalforeningen, through direct collaboration with families, and through the daily reality of living with chronic illness.

Available for iOS and Android