What Dose Insights describe and what they never do

Dose Insights are the part of the Dose Club app that turns a log into sentences. They sit in Dose Club Plus alongside the level chart and the prescriber PDF, and they follow one rule above all others: they describe what happened, and they never say what to do about it. This article explains what an insight contains, where the line is drawn and why.

A dose period

An insight covers a dose period: the time from one logged dose to the next. For a weekly medicine that is usually seven days, and longer when a dose was late. Everything in the insight is calculated from what you logged inside that period, so an insight is only as complete as the log it is built from.

What each insight contains

• Weight trend, in kilograms a week or your chosen units, from the weigh-ins in the period, with the percentage change.
• Symptom days: how many days in the period had a symptom logged, and the severities you gave them on the 0 to 3 scale.
• On-time rate: whether the dose that opened the period was logged on its scheduled day, and the running rate across periods.
• Symptoms by day since dose: across periods, which days after a dose your logged symptoms fall on.
• A plateau flag: when the weight trend has been flat for three weeks in a row, the insight says so.

Each of these is a description. "Weight trend flat for three weeks" is a statement about the numbers you entered, and the app attaches no judgement to it.

What they never do

• They never recommend a dose, a dose change or a schedule.
• They never rank or compare doses as better or worse, including your own earlier doses.
• They never say a result is good or bad, expected or unexpected.
• They never predict what will happen next.

The wording is checked mechanically as well as by people. A check in the build pipeline fails any release whose copy contains phrases that advise on dosing, so a sentence of that kind cannot reach the app by accident. Every screen that shows an insight or an estimate carries the same reminder: "Estimate based on published data. Check with your prescriber before making decisions."

Why the line is drawn there

Two sets of rules shape it. Apple's App Review Guidelines allow dosage calculators only from approved bodies, and the UK rules on medical devices treat software that calculates doses as likely to be a medical device, which brings its own regulatory requirements. The Dose Club app's stated purpose is record keeping and education. Descriptive insights sit inside that purpose; anything that recommended a dose would not. There is also a plainer reason: the person with your history, your blood tests and your prescription in front of them is your prescriber, and an app has none of those.

The prescriber PDF

The PDF gathers the doses, weights, symptoms and insights from a chosen period into one document for an appointment. The aim is a clear record in the hands of the person qualified to read it. The prescriber sees the on-time rate, the symptom days by day since dose and the weight trend, and the decision about what, if anything, follows from them is theirs and yours.

Where insights go, and where they do not

Insights stay in the app and, if you turn on backup and sync, in your encrypted backup. They are never written to Apple Health or Health Connect; the only thing the app shares with those services is the weight you entered yourself, and only with your permission. The level chart's estimates are never shared either.

Sources

• The Dose Club, How estimates work (page on this site)
• Apple App Review Guidelines, section 1.4.2
• MHRA guidance on medical device stand-alone software including apps: gov.uk

This article is information, not medical advice. Talk to your prescriber about your treatment.