Medicine recall alerts for your cabinet | mojApteczka

A medicine sitting in your drawer can be pulled from the market at any moment — and the GIF announcement is easy to miss. Your medicine cabinet shouldn't have to wait until you stumble across the news online.

Since version 1.10.0, the mojApteczka app checks whether any medicine in your cabinet has been withdrawn from the market by the Polish Chief Pharmaceutical Inspectorate (GIF). When it finds a match, it warns you with a banner in your cabinet and a notification, and one tap takes you straight to the official GIF decision. The whole check runs on your device — your list of medicines never leaves your phone.

Why medicine recall alerts matter

A market withdrawal is not the same as an expiry date running out. GIF withdraws a batch when testing reveals a quality defect, contamination, or a risk to patients — sometimes it concerns a single specific batch, sometimes the entire product. The announcements appear on the GIF website and in the media, but in the rush of daily life they are easy to overlook. Meanwhile a recalled medicine may still be sitting in the home cabinet and get given to a child, a senior, or yourself.

mojApteczka closes that gap: instead of requiring you to track the regulator's decisions yourself, it compares your cabinet against the current recall list for you.

On-device matching — your cabinet stays on your phone

Recall checking could work by sending your medicine list to a server and comparing it there. mojApteczka does the opposite:

• it downloads the public GIF recall list (the same data that is public for everyone),
• the comparison with your medicines is done locally, on your device,
• your list of medicines is never sent to a server.

This way you learn about a recall affecting your cabinet, while the most sensitive information — what you and your loved ones actually take — stays private. It is the same principle we apply to allergy profiles: the warning should be precise, but not at the cost of privacy.

Precision by batch number

Many GIF recalls concern a specific batch (series) of a medicine, not the entire product. That is why it matters most that the app knows which batch you have at home:

• when you scan the 2D code (DataMatrix) from a prescription package, mojApteczka reads and saves the batch number automatically,
• if a recall concerns exactly that batch, the warning is precise — you know it is about your specific package,
• if we don't know the batch number, the app doesn't pretend to know more — it shows an honest message asking you to check the batch on the package.

This approach is deliberate: it is better to ask you to look at the box than to flood you with a false alarm or stay silent about the risk.

Recalls always at hand

A notification can be missed, swiped away, or arrive at the wrong moment. That is why a recall warning doesn't end with a single push:

• a banner at the top of your cabinet flags active recalls,
• a separate list shows every recalled medicine — even if you miss the notification,
• from that list, one tap turns on recall notifications; if you turned them off earlier, the app takes you straight to Settings,
• a recall matched while notifications are off is saved and reaches you the moment you grant permission.

Every warning leads straight to the official GIF decision, so you can check the source yourself and find out what to do with the medicine.

How it works in practice

1. You add medicines to your cabinet — by scanning the package or manually. Scanning the 2D code also saves the batch number.
2. You turn on recall notifications.
3. The app downloads the GIF list and compares it with your cabinet on the device.
4. When a match appears, you see a banner and a notification; a tap opens the GIF decision.

Recalls work best paired with expiry date alerts — together they make sure no medicine that shouldn't be there stays in your cabinet.

Medicine recall alerts are available in the mojApteczka app on iOS from version 1.10.0 (June 2026); the Android version is in preparation. Matching against the GIF list applies to the Polish market.