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

Sunday evenings, public holidays, nights with a feverish child. That is exactly when it turns out that the three nearby pharmacies are all closed — and you need to find the fourth one, the one open now, fast.

The Pharmacy tab in mojApteczka shows all pharmacies open right now on a map within 2, 5, 10, or 25 km of you. After the first sync, the map also works offline — useful in rural areas and anywhere cellular coverage is spotty. If you are caring for a loved one, it is worth also checking out the caregiver role — the pharmacy locator and shared dosing 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, grant the app one-time access to your location,
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, phone number, and launch navigation in Apple Maps (or Google Maps as 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 lets you tell whether you can make it before the staff close up.

What Sets the Locator in mojApteczka Apart

The pharmacy map is a set of product decisions that together make a tool that works when you actually need it:

• „24/7 only” filter — shows only pharmacies genuinely operating 24/7, flagged based on their actual opening schedule, not a self-declaration.
• „Closing in X min” warning — an orange pin and label appear when a pharmacy will close within the next 30 minutes. Helps you pick the one that will actually 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 schedules. No need to remember that today happens to be All Saints' Day.
• One-tap navigation — the „Navigate” button opens Apple Maps, falling back to Google Maps on devices without it.
• Offline operation — after the first sync, the pharmacy data bundle (about 580 KB) is stored locally on your device. Search works without internet, in the same offline-first philosophy as the offline SPC documentation in mojApteczka.

Where the Pharmacy Data Comes From

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

Our backend pulls the data every night, geocodes it (assigning precise map coordinates), and parses opening hours 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 is sourced from official data — the Act on Days Free from Work and the Ministry of Health. Holidays are pre-loaded, so on a day off any pharmacy that only operates Monday to Saturday is automatically flagged as closed.

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

Both sound similar but 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. This is what the „24/7 only” filter in mojApteczka surfaces.
• On-duty pharmacy (dyżurna) — a pharmacy assigned to a rotating duty at night or on a holiday under art. 94 of the Polish Pharmaceutical Law. The schedule 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 art. 94 on-duty schedule is not published in the central dane.gov.pl database, so mojApteczka cannot surface it automatically — each county maintains its own schedule separately. If you are looking for an on-duty pharmacy at night or during a holiday, check your county council's website or call the nearest 24/7 pharmacy — mojApteczka will show you that one immediately 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 the first time, the app never sends your GPS anywhere:

• GPS is used locally to compute the distance between you and pharmacies from the bundled data,
• 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 SPC documentation) — it does not require your location.

That way the pharmacy map upholds the same privacy standard as the rest of mojApteczka: your health data and your location stay on the 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 serve all platforms once the client implementation is ready. If you want to know when the feature ships on Android, it is worth enabling dosing 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 medication-management routine:

• Dispensing medicines — register a dose given to a patient, even in the field, with confirmation stored locally.
• Offline SPC documentation — in the same offline-first philosophy, lets you check a product's characteristics without connectivity.
• Dosing reminders — before you run out of a medicine, the system warns you it is time to restock, 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 alerts — you know whether the medicine in your kit is still valid before you drive out for 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 it is in stock. The app shows each pharmacy's phone number on the detail card.

Note: the night and holiday on-duty schedule under art. 94 of the Polish Pharmaceutical Law is not published in the central database, so mojApteczka does not surface 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 holiday.

The pharmacy map in mojApteczka turns „finding an open pharmacy at night” from a panicked tab-flicking session into a single tap: you see which pharmacy is open now, whether you will make it there in time, and launch navigation with one gesture.