Apple is in the process of making available the newest iteration of its mobile operating system – iOS 13.5 which comes with some important enhancements and features. Key among those include a feature that would make it possible for iPhone and Apple Watch owners to let 911 call centres have access to your medical information when you are unable to provide them the info on your own, like when in an emergency.
Essentially, this is going to be implemented by enabling you to setup your iPhone and Apple Watch to let the early responders have access to the medical records you have saved in your Medical ID. The new feature in iOS 13.5 will use your location info from the Apple device you are using to find out if the place you are in comes under the purview of Enhanced Emergency Data services.
Just in case, you are not familiar with Medical ID, it is a setting within Apple’s Health App which allows you to include information that can be considered vital to your health. Those include any medical conditions that you might be suffering from, your blood type, any food or medicines that you might be allergic to and so on.
You might as well want to include the contact info of some of your close friends or relative as well in Medical ID, people whom you would like to be contacted when you are facing a health emergency. Apple has stated all information that forms part of your Medical ID will be encrypted and stored on your device to allow for adequate security and privacy of the data. The feature is going to be compatible with the fall detection tech used in Apple Watch Series 4 and Series 5.
The above feature can be considered similar to another feature that has been available on iPhone devices for some time now. That include the ability to turn on a setting that will allow the emergency workers to read your Medical ID card. For this, you won’t even have to unlock your iPhone as the info will be available by tapping on an icon found on the bottom left of your iPhone lock screen.
This apart, among the other features to be part of iOS 13.5 include updates to the face ID software so that it is able to recognize you even if you are wearing a face mask, so relevant these days when Covid 19 is wreaking havoc the world over. Then there is going to be another feature wherein you will be able to turn off auto face zooming.
Last but not the least, the latest iOS update will also include the Covid 19 notification API that is aimed to warn you when you come in the vicinity of anybody who might have tested Covid 19 positive. For those not in the knowing, Apple and Google are collaborating to develop a Covid 19 notification system that would be applicable to iOS and Android devices.
