Pharmacy Map — Find a Pharmacy Open Now, Even at Night or on Public Holidays

Sunday evenings, public holidays, a night with a child running a fever. That is exactly when you discover that the three nearby pharmacies are all closed — and you need to find the fourth one, the one open now, quickly.

The Pharmacy tab in mojApteczka shows all pharmacies currently open within 2, 5, 10, or 25 km of you on a map. After the first sync, the map also works offline — useful when you are out and about, in rural areas, and anywhere mobile coverage is unreliable. If you care for a loved one, it is also worth looking at the caregiver role — the pharmacy locator and shared dose history work together.

How the Pharmacy Map Works in mojApteczka

The process is straightforward and takes just a few seconds:

1. open the Pharmacy tab in the “More” menu,
2. on first launch, allow the app to access your location (once),
3. pick a search radius: 2, 5, 10, or 25 km,
4. optionally enable the “24/7 only” filter,
5. switch between list and map view — tap a pharmacy to see details, its phone number, and launch navigation in Apple Maps (or Google Maps as a fallback).

The app shows the distance to each pharmacy, its opening hours, and, for pharmacies about to close, an orange “Closing in X min” warning. That helps you see whether you can get there before the staff finish their shift.

What Sets the Locator in mojApteczka Apart

The pharmacy map brings together a set of product decisions that make it useful when you actually need it:

• “24/7 only” filter — shows only pharmacies that actually operate 24/7, based on their real opening schedule rather than a declaration.
• “Closing in X min” warning — an orange pin and label appear when a pharmacy will close within the next 30 minutes. This helps you choose one that can still serve you in time.
• Polish public holidays handled automatically — Corpus Christi, 1 and 3 May, 15 August, 1 and 11 November, 25-26 December and the other statutory holidays are treated as Sundays in pharmacy opening schedules. You do not have to remember that today happens to be All Saints' Day.
• One-tap navigation — the “Navigate” button opens Apple Maps or, on devices without it, Google Maps.
• Offline operation — after the first sync, the pharmacy data bundle (about 580 KB) is stored locally on your device. Search works without internet, just like the offline SmPC documentation in mojApteczka.

Where the Pharmacy Data Comes From

mojApteczka uses the Polish Pharmacy Register (Rejestr Aptek) — a public register of pharmacies and pharmacy outlets maintained by the Centre for e-Health (Centrum e-Zdrowia) and published on dane.gov.pl. It currently contains over 12,000 community pharmacies in Poland, with addresses, phone numbers, and opening hours.

Our system pulls the data every night, geocodes it (assigning precise map coordinates), and converts opening schedules into a format that supports fast on-device search. As a result, the app knows not just where a pharmacy is, but also whether it is open right now, not just “whether it operates today”.

The Polish public-holiday calendar comes from official sources — the Act on Days Free from Work and data from the Ministry of Health. The calendar is updated in advance, so on a public holiday any pharmacy with standard Monday-to-Saturday hours is automatically marked as closed.

24/7 Pharmacy vs On-Duty Pharmacy — What's the Difference?

Both terms sound similar, but they mean quite different things:

• 24/7 pharmacy (całodobowa) — a pharmacy that permanently operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are several hundred of these in Poland, mostly in larger cities. These are the pharmacies shown by the “24/7 only” filter in mojApteczka.
• On-duty pharmacy (dyżurna) — a pharmacy assigned to a rotating duty at night or on a public holiday under Article 94 of the Polish Pharmaceutical Law. The rota is set by the county council (rada powiatu) for a given period and applies only during specific hours (for example, 22:00-8:00 on a particular night).

The Article 94 duty rota is not published in the central dane.gov.pl database, so mojApteczka cannot show it automatically — each county maintains its own schedule separately. If you are looking for an on-duty pharmacy at night or on a public holiday, check your county council's website or call the nearest 24/7 pharmacy — mojApteczka will show you that pharmacy straight away, together with its phone number.

Privacy — Your Location Stays on Your Device

The pharmacy locator runs entirely on your device. Once the data bundle has been synced for the first time, the app does not send your GPS location anywhere:

• GPS is used locally to calculate the distance between you and pharmacies from the downloaded data bundle,
• search, filtering, and sorting happen on-device, not on a server,
• the pharmacy data bundle is downloaded from an authenticated CloudFront endpoint (using the same signed cookies as the SmPC documentation) — it does not require your location.

This means the pharmacy map keeps to the same privacy standard as the rest of mojApteczka: your health data and your location stay on your device.

Availability

The pharmacy map is currently available in mojApteczka for iOS, from version 1.7.0. Android and web versions are planned — the same server-side data bundle will support all platforms once the implementation is ready. If you want to know when the feature comes to Android, it is worth enabling dosage reminders — we announce major updates through the same channel.

How It Works With Other Features

The pharmacy map works best as part of a broader routine for managing medicines at home:

• Administering medicines — record a dose given to a patient, even when you are out, with confirmation stored locally.
• Offline SmPC documentation — with the same offline-ready approach, lets you check the summary of product characteristics without mobile coverage.
• Dosage reminders — before you run out of a medicine, the system warns you that it is time to buy more, and the map shows you where.
• PDF report for the doctor — if your doctor writes a prescription in the evening, the report helps you quickly decide what to pick up and where.
• Expiry date alerts — you know whether the medicine in your home medicine cabinet is still in date before you set out to buy a new one.

Important Limitation

The pharmacy map relies on official Polish Pharmacy Register data, refreshed daily. It does not replace a conversation with a pharmacist — if you urgently need a specific medicine, call the pharmacy before setting out to confirm that it is available. The app shows each pharmacy's phone number on the detail card.

Note: the night and public-holiday duty rota under Article 94 of the Polish Pharmaceutical Law is not published in the central database, so mojApteczka does not show it. The nearest 24/7 pharmacy and its phone number are available directly in the app — this is the most reliable way to find an open pharmacy at night or on a public holiday.

The pharmacy map in mojApteczka turns finding an open pharmacy at night from panicked switching between tabs into a single tap: you see which pharmacy is open now, whether you can get there in time, and launch navigation with one gesture.