How much space does the full database take on my phone?

The full compressed database is about 35 MB. Data is split into ATC therapeutic groups and downloaded progressively in the background. After the first sync, updates are incremental — only groups with changed documentation are fetched, so each refresh uses minimal data.

Is the documentation available in languages other than Polish?

Source data is stored in Polish only — that cuts the database size fourfold. When your device language is not Polish, every SPC section shows a "Translate" button. Translation happens locally via the Apple Translation Framework (iOS 18+) without sending data to any external server.

Where does the SPC data come from?

The data is extracted from the official ChPL documents published by URPL (the Polish Office for Registration of Medicinal Products). mojApteczka parses them into structured form so all nine clinical sections are available as expandable cards on the medicine page.

Does SPC documentation replace a consultation with a doctor or pharmacist?

No. The documentation is informational. A disclaimer appears every time you open an SPC section. SPC is a tool for quick fact-checking, not a substitute for speaking with a specialist — if anything is unclear, consult your doctor or pharmacist.

Offline SPC Documentation — Indications and Dosing Without Internet

Q: What is the difference between SPC and the patient leaflet?

The patient leaflet (PIL) uses plain language and contains simplified information for everyday use. The SPC (Summary of Product Characteristics, called ChPL in Poland) is the official pharmaceutical document approved by the regulator and written for healthcare professionals. It holds precise data on the active substance, dosing, contraindications, interactions, and adverse reactions — significantly more than a PIL.

It’s 11:40 p.m. Your child has a 39 °C fever. You reach for paracetamol, then remember you gave ibuprofen an hour ago. Can they be combined? What about the dose — the syrup is 120 mg per 5 ml, the child weighs 18 kg? You open Google. Loading. Loading. Finally a list of results — a parenting blog, a pharmacist’s forum, a URPL page with a PDF five clicks deep. Every answer different.

This is the moment when offline SPC documentation stops being “a nice extra” and becomes something you actually depend on.

SPC — an official document, not a pharmacy blog

SPC (Summary of Product Characteristics), known in Poland as ChPL (Charakterystyka Produktu Leczniczego), is the official pharmaceutical document approved by the regulator — in Poland that is URPL, the Office for Registration of Medicinal Products. Every registered medicine has its own SPC, and it is this document that defines what the drug may be used for, at what doses, and under what conditions.

Unlike the patient leaflet (PIL), SPC is not a simplified translation for lay readers. It is written in technical language for doctors, pharmacists, and nurses. That is why it contains considerably more information — detailed mechanism of action, pharmacokinetic profiles, specific interaction tables, frequency classifications for adverse events.

For a user at home, that difference has practical consequences: in an SPC you will find precise pediatric dosing by body weight, a list of medicines that cannot be combined with a given preparation, and specific situations in which the drug is contraindicated. The PIL is a summary. The SPC is the full story.

Why offline — instead of Google or the URPL website?

When you need to check dosing, coverage is often the problem. Typical situations:

Countryside, mountains, holiday cabin — 3G/4G works but a 500 KB–2 MB PDF takes forever to load
Flights and connections — airplane mode, and a child can’t sleep through an infection
Hospital — a ward corridor with one patient Wi-Fi and three hundred people online
Blackouts and storms — 2022 showed that power and internet can both disappear for dozens of hours

In each of these situations, offline SPC is the only reliable source where you don’t have to trade clinical accuracy for “whatever Google returned first”.

mojApteczka syncs documentation for more than 8 000 Polish medicinal products straight to your phone. On first launch the app streams the data in the background, grouped by ATC therapeutic class (the WHO Anatomical-Therapeutic-Chemical classification). The total is roughly 35 MB compressed — less than one iPhone photograph. Once downloaded it stays in your pocket.

Nine clinical sections — what you find in the app

Each SPC entry in mojApteczka is split into nine collapsible sections, visible as cards on the medicine page. You can expand or collapse each one independently — so you can jump straight to whatever you need.

Indications — what the drug is intended to treat, which conditions it is used for
Dosing — recommended doses for adults, children, and special groups (renal impairment, elderly, pregnancy)
Contraindications — when the drug must not be used (allergies, comorbidities)
Warnings and precautions — situations that require particular attention, monitoring, or dose adjustment
Drug interactions — which substances it reacts with and what those interactions look like in practice
Pregnancy and lactation — safety classification for pregnant women and recommendations for breastfeeding mothers
Adverse reactions — classified by frequency (very common, common, uncommon, rare, very rare)
Overdose — symptoms of exceeding the dose and the recommended response
Storage — storage conditions, shelf life after opening, stability

All of it available in two taps: open the medicine card, tap “Active substance information”, scroll to the section you need.

On-demand translation — without sending data to the cloud

The documentation is stored only in Polish. That is a deliberate decision: shipping four language versions on the phone would quadruple the database size and introduce the risk of machine translation errors.

Instead, every SPC section has a “Translate” button. Translation happens locally, on your device, via the Apple Translation Framework (iOS 18 or newer). Supported languages are Polish, English, Ukrainian, and Russian — the same four as the rest of the app.

What it gives you in practice:

Privacy — data never leaves the device
No cost — you don’t pay for machine translation because it’s a built-in iOS library
Works offline — the language pack (40–50 MB) is downloaded once for the whole system, after which translation runs without internet

This matters especially if you care for a senior who speaks Ukrainian, or your doctor is English-speaking — you don’t have to worry about the drug documentation being unreadable for them.

How synchronization behaves in practice

When you open the app for the first time, you’ll see a banner reporting SPC sync progress. Data downloads in the background, but you can already use the therapeutic groups that have been fetched — no need to wait for the whole process to finish.

After the first sync the app refreshes the database every 24 hours in the background, but only incrementally. That means only those ATC groups whose documentation has changed — new interactions, updated contraindications, new pregnancy-and-lactation studies — are fetched. Each update uses minimal bandwidth.

Data lands in a local SwiftData store on your phone. That means access is immediate — millisecond response times, comparable to opening a note.

When SPC is particularly useful

A new prescription

The doctor prescribes a new preparation. Before you fill the prescription at the pharmacy, you check the “Drug interactions” section in the app — is the new medicine compatible with what you already take? You read the “Contraindications” section — is there a comorbidity that rules this drug out? You check “Adverse reactions” — so you know what to expect and when to call back.

A child with fever

Pediatric dosing for paracetamol and ibuprofen depends on body weight. SPC lays out the ranges precisely — how many mg per kg, how often per day, maximum daily dose, minimum interval between doses. No searching through forums, no guessing.

Caring for a senior

In elderly patients many drugs need dose adjustment. SPC has a dedicated special-populations section — that’s where you learn, for example, whether a renally cleared drug needs reduction below a creatinine clearance of 60 ml/min.

Travel pharmacy

You’re travelling abroad. You bring four medicines. On the plane nobody has internet. Offline SPC lets you verify, before giving a dose, whether a drug stays stable in the local temperature, what to do if a dose is missed, and whether it can be combined with an antihistamine for a climate change.

SPC as part of a larger system

SPC documentation in mojApteczka is not a standalone feature — it is a clinical layer beneath other tools. When you add a new medicine via AI recognition, the app automatically links the scan with the matching SPC entry. When you search the NFZ database through medicine search, each result comes with inline documentation. When the system checks drug interactions inside your home pharmacy, it reads from the “Drug interactions” section of the same SPCs. And if you need the original PDF published by URPL, the leaflets and ChPL view links straight to it.

That’s the difference between an app that only knows the names of your medicines and an app that understands what they do.

Availability

Offline SPC documentation runs in the iOS mobile app. Minimum system version is iOS 17.0; on-demand translation through the Apple Translation Framework requires iOS 18.0 or newer. The feature is part of the standard toolset — no separate subscription — and it starts working as soon as you sign in.

Technical details and the full list of supported sections are on the Offline SPC documentation feature page.

Download mojApteczka on the App Store and keep a clinical database of 8 000 medicines in your pocket — regardless of signal.

Questions about SPC documentation or other mojApteczka features? Write to us at kontakt@mojapteczka.pl.