Wish list: Automatic localization of Medical ID

Nov 23, 2019

This week I went abroad for work for a few days.
I brought all of my Apple devices with me and some of their technologies have been of great help during this work mission. Apple Maps and CarPlay on the rental car allowed me to drive for hours without getting lost in this new territory where all roadsigns were not understandable at all. The ability to take reminders with Siri on the Watch proved to be of great help while I was working: since I had to use gloves, and because they were getting very dirty, I initially kept on taking them off every time I needed to input data on my MacBook; after a while, I realized I could ask Siri to keep notes of what I had to type in, allowing me to keep on working and to fill data in all at once when I was finished.
All of this was great and extremely useful, but at some point a thought surfaced: what if I get hurt?

As hypochondriacal as it may sound, being hurt in a foreign country when you're alone is one of the things I would greatly avoid.
It was with this thoughts in mind that I reached out to my pocket to check one thing: is the Medical ID on my iPhone translated to the local language?

Leveraging on existing informations

As you may have guessed, Medical ID does not translate to the local language once you are abroad. And if there is something you wished the locals to understand, it certainly is your medical informations, emergency contacts, etc.
Apple devices already have the capability of understanding where they are, thanks to localization, and to translate relevant content, as their OSes are already translated in many different languages all being stored in your iPhone all the time. Once an iPhone understand where it is with its GPS, it could switch the Emergency button, Medical ID button and Medical ID informations to the local language automatically to be easily understood by locals.
It could even be set as an option, together with the option to always show at least one other language, such as English or Spanish or French, no matter where you are, in a similar fashion of the phrase Emergency call blinking in several languages on that very emergency screen.

Medical ID translation shouldn't be a nightmare to implement and it could turn out to be quite helpful. I read Apple sees health-care as the field it will leave its greatest contributions to mankind, this might just be one more of them.

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