Just like in the iOS app, items with issues are highlighted in orange or red. You can tap on the cards to switch between viewing all items, those with issues or the contents of a single box.

You can view and edited shared boxes and items too, but you will still need to use the iOS app to set up iCloud collaboration.

The web service will be improved over time. Please contact us if you have any ideas or requests for ways to make it better. You can follow the links in the app or email info@ampoule.app.

Ampoule Cloud can be found at cloud.ampoule.app.

Collaboration happens on a per-box basis. When you share a box for collaboration, you remain its owner and only you can add or remove participants. You can also allow full editing privileges or set a participant to read-only.

How to share a box for collaboration

Sharing a box for collaboration is simple, and uses a familiar iOS workflow.

1. Go to the Edit Box page (you can use the menu in the top right when viewing the contents of a box, or with a long press on a box).

2. Scroll down and tap on Collaborate.

   

3. You will see a page appear that lets you add other iCloud users. Tap on Share With More People to send other people a message or email with a link. You can also copy the link directly. Share Options allows you to choose which users can read or modify your data.

   

4. The other users will need Ampoule installed and iCloud enabled on their iPhone or iPad. When they receive your message and tap the link, Ampoule will open and your shared box will be visible for them.

5. You can see a list of participants and roles below the Collaborate button. Tap Manage Collaboration any time you need to add or remove participants, stop collaboration completely, or alter a participants ability to modify your data.

   

At the bottom of the edit page for a shared item or box you will see an extended list of metadata. This includes the name of the participant who last modified the data and when they did so.

Shared items can be identified with a cloud icon; boxes or items that you own will have a person inside the cloud icon.

Simply navigate to the Data tab in Ampoule, then select Export CSV. You can select which boxes to include in the CSV file, then choose whether to save it to the Files app, copy the text to the pasteboard or share the file with other people.

Example

Here is an example of a CSV export from Ampoule. It includes the column headers. Rows are separated by new lines and values are separated by commmas. You can see that it is just plain text and easy for humans to read too. Fields with no data have nothing between the commas.

Box,Name,Strength,Type,Batch,Quantity,Expiry,Tags
Medical Kit,Aciclovir,50 mg/g,Cream,ABC123,2,,Antiviral
Medical Kit,Quetiapine,20 mg/ml,Suspension,,1,31 Oct 2023,
Medical Kit,Levothyroxine,100 µg,Tablet,AB29GLJ,0,30 Apr 2023,

When imported to a spreadsheet application, this data would be tabulated like this:

Hopefully CSV export is useful and increases the ways you can use your Ampoule data.

Other export options

From the Data tab in Ampoule, you can also export in JSON and PDF formats. There are Ampoule News articles about these!

• PDF Exporting

• What is JSON anyway?

Apple's Shortcuts app displays all of the possibilities for each app on your device. You can get a visual summary of your inventory, get a text summary to use in other shortcuts and add a new box or add items to any of your existing boxes.

If you ask Siri to add a new item to your inventory, you'll see an interface like this where you can quickly enter the details, no matter what you're doing on your device.

What do I say?

Look out for the Siri tips throughout the app. They provide an example phrase that you can say to Siri to complete the desired task.

Endless customisation

The Shortcuts app lets you connect the functions of different apps together. For example, you can chain Ampoule's text summary into an email and schedule this to be sent periodically.

In fact, I've already made an example of this type of shortcut for you! Tap on Email Ampoule Summary and it will open the Shortcuts app. You can customise the shortcut by entering an email address and selecting the level of detail of the summary. Finally, this shortcut can be scheduled to run on a regular basis.

I hope this provides some inspiration for what is possible with Shortcuts and Ampoule.

How to use tags

Create tags

Tags are created by tapping on Tags on the settings tab. Type the name of your tag and select a colour before tapping Add.

Add tags to items

To add a tag to an item, tap Edit Tags on the item editing page. Select the tags you need from the popup and they will appear in the items tag list. Long press on a tag to remove it.

If you have selected the comprehensive list row style, you will see tags displayed below an item's details. If preferred, this can be switched off in settings.

Search with tags

When in a list view, you can filter by a tag when you tap on the search bar. Select a tag from the dropdown and the list will display only those items that use that tag. You can then search with text as normal from this subset.

There are lots of ways to use tags, depending on how you structure your inventory. You can designate certain families of drugs, the names of suppliers or stock that needs to be audited or replaced quickly.

Hopefully tags will be helpful, but how you use them is up to you!

Ampoule makes this easy with PDF exporting. Portable Document Format (PDF) is a global standard for digital documents that is compatible across all systems and can even be printed on paper!

In Ampoule, PDF Export is in the Data tab. You can select any or all of your boxes to export and customise the sorting of boxes and items independently.

There are many options for customising the appearance of the printed document, including icon styles and colours. You can also select which item data fields to include, such as type, batch, expiry and quantity.

When you tap on Generate PDF, your document will be created. It can then be saved, shared or printed as needed.

The filename for saving or sharing can be customised, but this is optional. The default value includes a timestamp so you can easily distinguish multiple versions of your documents.

Until now, Ampoule used a service called Revue to manage the newsletter and subscriber list. This service was provided by Twitter. As you may know, Twitter is now under new management and the Revue service has been closed.

Therefore, Ampoule News is moving to a new independent service called Hashnode.

If you have subscribed to email updates, you will notice them coming from a different address. Articles on the blog might look slightly different, but viewing articles in the app will not be affected.

Finally, suggestions for articles or questions about Ampoule are very welcome! Just email info@ampoule.app or use the form at ampoule.app.

It is widely used and can be viewed and edited in any simple text editor. The futuristic donut image you see above is the JSON logo.

In basic terms, JSON represents your data as a series of properties and values, with each object enclosed in curly braces { } and lists of objects enclosed in square braces [ ].

Ampoule can import and export your data in JSON format. When exporting, you can either save to a file or copy the resulting text to be pasted elsewhere. If you view the output in a text editor, you will see this structure, with a list of objects representing your boxes. Each box has a drugs property, which is a list of the items it contains. All of the customisable properties from the Ampoule user interface are represented.

If you are new to this, there are a few things you might find peculiar:

• Most text is contained inside "quotation marks", unless it has a special meaning, like true or false.

• Every box and item has an identifier. This is globally unique and is used by Ampoule to distinguish items that might otherwise be similar, and to determine if an item has been imported before. You can see this identifier at the bottom of the editing screen in Ampoule.

• The creation date is a number, representing the number of seconds since 1 January 2001 UTC. This is an Apple standard, which is related to Unix Time; a global standard widely used in computing for representing time.

• The colour of items can be represented in two ways; either by a colourName property, which is one of the preset colours in Ampoule, or (if that property is empty), a colour made from the red, green and blue components in colorValues.

Example of Ampoule JSON export

The text below represents the JSON data for single box named Medical Kit, containing one item: Amoxicillin.

[
  {
    "name": "Medical Kit",
    "information": "General medical kit.",
    "icon": "plus-square",
    "colorValues": {
        "blue": 0.8,
        "alpha": 1,
        "red": 0.6,
        "green": 0.3
    },
    "colorName": "systemPurple",
    "latitude": 0,
    "longitude": 0,
    "locationName": "Belfast",
    "identifier": "23A7D877-0D3E-4F39-8F5B-8DF2D2A64A7E",
    "creationDate": 730762589.935077,
    "drugs": [
      {
        "name": "Amoxicillin",
        "strength": 50,
        "strengthUnits": "mg/ml",
        "type": "Suspension",
        "batch": "DEF456",
        "icon": "prescription-bottle-alt",
        "colorValues": {
          "alpha": 1,
          "green": 0.3,
          "red": 0.6,
          "blue": 0.8
        },
        "colorName": "systemPurple",
        "quantity": 1,
        "expiry": {
          "day": 30,
          "month": 6,
          "year": 2026
        },
        "isControlled": false,
        "unitVolume": 100,
        "unitVolumeUnits": "ml",
        "tagList": [
          {
            "name": "Antibiotic",
            "color": "systemTeal"
          }
        ],
        "notes": "No notes."
        "sendNotifications": true,
        "gtin": "",
        "manufacturer": "",
        "identifier": "DC43C27C-FE41-4DAF-A1F0-4BCB363E6335",
        "creationDate": 731458400.26271    
      }
    ]
  }
]

Ampoule will only be able to import JSON from a file if it is formatted in this way (though not all properties need to be included).

Tap Custom Types and Units on the Settings tab to get started.

Custom Types

You can tap existing presets to edit or reorder them. Type in the field at the top to add new values.

Your custom values will be available options when you tap the list icon on the right of the Type field.

Custom Units

You can also do the same for the Units field, if the presets are not enough. Maybe you need something obscure like mg/mmol, kilodaltons or Becquerels!

1: Quickly reduce a quantity by one

If you have used an ampoule or tablet from your stock, you can quickly reduce its quantity by one by swiping left on the item row and selecting Quantity -1.

2: Select an exact expiry date

Setting an item’s expiry to a month and year will automatically select the end of that month. You can also tap the date to bring up a calendar, which will let you select an exact date.

3: Context menus

Long pressing on an item will bring up a context menu. Here you can search for the item on the British National Formulary (BNF) website. You can also move the item to any other box quickly.

Context menus are also available for boxes. Here you can edit the box information or move all of its items to another box.

You can also change an items box when editing it by tapping the button in the top right.

4: Low stock limits

When editing an item, you can add a low stock limit. This is the field below the quantity. When the quantity is lower than this limit, the item will be flagged as low stock.

5: Add a location to a box

When editing a box, you can add a static location. This is useful for situations where you have multiple groups of items in different geographic locations.

You can simply enter text to represent the location, or select a location from the map view, which will store the latitude and longitude.

6: Item row styles

In the Settings tab, you can change the appearance of the items rows in the list. There are four options, from Minimal to Comprehensive, which vary in size and the amount of information displayed.

You can use different styles for each of three contexts; All Items, Single Box and Focused (viewing items with a common issue from the Summary Tab).

7: Sorting

Tapping the Sort button in the top right provides options for sorting your items by Name, Type, Box, Creation and Expiry (either ascending or descending).

Like item row styles, the sorting can be different in the three contexts: All Items, Single Box and Focused.

The information pane at the bottom of the screen will show your current context, the total count of items in the context and the current sorting criteria.

8: Summary charts

The Summary tab includes a chart that summarises your inventory and any problems (out of stock or expired, coloured in red) and warnings (low stock or expiring this month, coloured in orange).

There are two options; a horizontal stacked bar chart and a waffle chart. You can switch between these with a long press or in the Settings tab, where can also change the scale of the waffle chart.

You can also choose how items with both problems and warnings are displayed; either displaying them as part of the problem section in red, or in their own section with red and orange colouring.

The stacked bar chart is also displayed for each box. This can be toggled in the Settings tab, or you can use a traffic light indicator instead.

The stacked bar chart is also displayed in Ampoule’s Home Screen Widgets.

9: Custom colours

Ampoule has a range of preset colours to choose from to customise your items and boxes. When editing a box or item, tap the colour circle beside the icon to display a colour picker. This allows almost limitless colour possibilities.

You can make it as colourful as you want, or if you want a more muted, professional palette, you can use a selection of neutrals and less intense colours!

10: Sample data

Importing sample data (from the Data tab or the central button when you have an empty inventory) is a great way to see what Ampoule can do.

Keep in mind that if you select the option to delete sample data, they will be deleted forever, even if they have been edited.

If you have customised sample items and intend to keep them in your inventory, you can tap the Make Sample Item/Box Permanent button on the editing screen. This will ensure that it does not get deleted when deleting other sample data. Making a box permanent will also make all of its contents permanent.

Ampoule started as a spreadsheet that I used to manage my inventory of drugs as part of my work as a general practitioner and urgent care doctor in Northern Ireland.

The problem was that I didn’t remember to check the spreadsheet, so I set about developing a simple app for my iPhone that would notify me when items were expiring.

The first version was released in 2017. Since then, Ampoule has been used by people all over the world to manage their medicines; from home first aid kits to emergency response teams.

The next version...

Ampoule 2 was released in July 2022, with many improvements over the original version. In many ways, it is closer to what I wanted Ampoule to be from the beginning. I hope you find Ampoule 2 simple to use and helpful in whatever situation you need it.

Share your ideas!

Feedback, ideas and questions are always welcome. Let me know how I can make Ampoule better!