Technology can be a powerful way to make life easier. Apps can be especially powerful, as you can take them with you anywhere. In this Carely app review, we’re looking at the Carely app and how it can help caregivers.
Carely is designed to promote communication – making it easier for family members to coordinate care.
So, how well does the app work?
In Brief
Product Name: Carely
Product Type: Smartphone app
Rating: 3.5/5
Useful For: Cases where multiple family members are involved in caregiving. Can help to keep everyone connected and to coordinate care.
Personal Perspectives: Carely is a free app and it does many functions well. For these reasons alone, it is worth checking out.
Nevertheless, the app has limitations and some users find it buggy.
Our Full Carely App Review
What is Carely?
The idea of Carely is simple – communication.
The app aims to ease communication between the caregiver (or caregivers), family members and care providers.
Doing so can make it easier to coordinate care and to resolve issues as they occur.
How Does it Work?
The first step with Carely is to create a profile. Once you’ve done so, you can:
- Join an existing Care Circle, or
- Create a new Care Circle
When you create a new Care Circle, you can choose your relationship to the caree. While there is no ‘other’ option, the list of possible relationships is extensive (there are probably 20 or so different options, including friend).
I called the care recipient ‘Care’ when I set up the app, which is why the app asks ‘what’s your relationship to Care?’
The next step is to add in conditions. You start to type these in and then Carely shows the appropriate conditions that it has as options.
As some reviewers have mentioned, there are limitations to this feature. The database doesn’t include all conditions and you can’t add anything that isn’t in the database.
Once you’ve answered the questions about your care recipient, you are able to invite people to your Care Circle (the process can be left to a later date if you want).
This brings us to the main screen of the app, the Care feed.
This feed shows messages from members in your Care Circle (including your own messages. You can include text and an image, and people can add reactions and comments.
There is also a calendar section. Oddly, this is just for planning visits to the care recipient. It doesn’t seem like you can keep notes of the Care Recipient’s appointments on here, which is a shame.
Another feature is creating a Visit report. This allows you to provide various pieces of information to other members of your Care Circle, like:
- Date and time of visit
- Any comments
- Activities that you did
- The care recipient’s mood
- Any key areas of concern (e.g. confusion or pain)
The finished report shows up in the Care feed. Once again, people can comment or leave reactions.
Another interesting feature is the ability to send direct messages to other members of the Care circle.
The final thing to talk about is the Care Circle itself. You can choose who you invite as caregivers to the Care Circle. Members don’t really need to be caregivers. You might also add in family members who aren’t caregiving, but wish to remain updated.
Providers can be added into a second tier within your Care Circle (although, it’s not clear whether they can see the feed or not).
The Care Circle is shown as a list or an image, where you can tap through to see who the individual members are and to communicate with them.
Carely App Reviews
Carely averages 4.2 stars across 33 reviews. Averaging above 4 stars is always a good thing. However, the rating does suggest that some members aren’t happy.
33 reviews is pretty low for an app. Still, caregiving apps target a limited audience, so perhaps this isn’t surprising.
While reviews are positive, many reviewers are happy about the concept of the app, rather than how it functions in practice. Reviewers mentioned various issues with the app or areas where it could be improved, such as the following.
- More options for conditions are needed. Some common ones are missing, including high cholesterol and hypertension.
- A group chat option would be useful.
- Would be useful if doctor’s appointments could be added onto the calendar.
- Typing out information isn’t always easy. There are too many extra steps.
- The ability to list medications is needed.
- App sometimes bugs out and users don’t get updates.
- Events can’t always be deleted from the calendar.
One good thing is that Carely, Inc. appears to be working on the app and improving it based on user feedback. This should mean that issues decrease over time, while the number of app functions increases.
Our Thoughts About Carely
Carely isn’t a perfect app. It is missing some useful features and has bugs from time-to-time.
But, Carely is a free app, one that is easy to use and has a wide collection of features.
It’s easy to see how Carely would help you to talk to family members and update everyone on information.
Of course, there are other apps that you can turn to as well, such as Backpack Health and various tablet apps for seniors.
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