1. Get Familiar — The Screen You See First

Before you do anything, take thirty seconds to learn where the controls live. SafetyBuddy has four zones on every page. Once you know them, every page will feel like home.

The Hamburger Menu ☰

The three horizontal lines in the top-left corner are called a hamburger menu — a universal web symbol meaning "tap here to see the full navigation." Tap it and a sidebar slides in from the left with links to every page on the site. Tap anywhere outside it or tap the ✕ to close it.

The Login / Logout Button

The button in the top-right corner of every page tells you your sign-in status at a glance:

The Listen Button 🔊

Many pages have a 🔊 Listen button. Tap it and SafetyBuddy reads the page aloud to you — hands-free, eyes-free. This is especially useful when you are stressed, tired, or need to hear something explained while you are driving or in a waiting room.

The Listen player is sticky and floating — it stays on screen as you scroll so you never lose your place. It starts near the top of the page but you can drag it anywhere — move it to a corner, the bottom of the screen, wherever it's out of your way. It remembers where it is until you close the page.

• ▶ Play — starts reading from the current section
• ⏸ Pause — stops; tap Play to resume exactly where you stopped
• ⏮ -5s / +5s — jump backward or forward a few seconds
• Scroll to any section — the player follows along and offers to read from wherever you land
• Drag the grip bar — labeled "Move me or scroll there to Listen" — relocate the player anywhere on screen
• Deep-link — share a URL with a section hash (e.g. why.html#why-rcca) and the player starts at that exact section

The Talk / Speak Button 🎙️ and Auto-Fill

Anywhere you see a 🎙️ microphone symbol next to a text field, you can tap it and speak instead of type. SafetyBuddy listens, converts your speech to text, and drops it into the field automatically — auto-fill by voice.

🕒 Timers & Tools

Open the hamburger menu and scroll to 🕒 Timers & Tools. This section of Settings holds patient-centered utilities: appointment countdown timers, symptom check-in reminders, pain log prompts, and other tools designed to keep you ready before a care team visit — without requiring you to remember everything yourself.

2. Quick Start — Up and Running in 5 Minutes

SafetyBuddy is free. No app to install. Open a browser on any device and go to safetybuddy.info.

2. The Platform at a Glance

SafetyBuddy is built as a set of specialized tools — each one focused on a different part of your healthcare journey. All data is yours. SafetyBuddy never sells it, never mines it, never shares it without your explicit action.

3. Seven Ways to Enter Your Information

SafetyBuddy was designed for people under stress — the last thing you should worry about is how to get information in. Every tool that takes text gives you seven options. Use whichever works in the moment.

4. Cross-Device Camera — Phone to Desktop

Phone cameras take sharper pictures than most desktop or laptop webcams. SafetyBuddy remembers your last photo across all your devices automatically.

5. Patients Say — Your Voice

This is where your experience becomes part of the public record. A post to Patients Say appears on Provider Ratings for anyone to read — no account needed to view it.

The Zander Scale — A Better Way to Rate

Standard 5-star ratings hide harm. A doctor who avoids risk gets 3 stars; a doctor who harmed someone might get 3 stars too — the scale cannot tell them apart. The Zander Scale fixes this with two separate decisions:

Adding a Photo to Your Post

After choosing your tab (Satisfied / Dissatisfied), you will see an optional Add a picture block. You can:

• Take picture — opens the camera directly
• Use last shot — loads your most recent photo from any device

Every photo is automatically scanned by Google Vision Safe Search before it saves. If it fails the safety check, you are asked to take a different picture — no penalty, just a retake. If a photo passes but is later found inappropriate, one admin action removes it permanently and the account loses photo posting rights immediately (one strike).

6. Provider Ratings — What the World Sees

Provider Ratings is fully public. Any person — patient, family member, journalist, care team member, researcher — can open it with no account and read every approved post. This is the accountability layer.

• Search by provider name
• See Zander Scale stars, post title, story, and optional photo thumbnail
• Tap any post's Share your experience about this provider link → goes to Patients Say with the provider pre-filled
• Care teams: no login needed to read what their patients posted

7. Know First — Your Providers

Know First is your private provider intelligence file. Before a visit — or right after meeting a new specialist — you build a card for that provider. SafetyBuddy's AI then gives you a private analysis to help you ask the right questions.

How to add a provider

1. Tap Add NEW Provider
2. Type the name — or tap the ⚡ bolt and photograph a business card. OCR extracts name, specialty, and phone automatically.
3. Fill remaining fields (or voice-dictate them). Phone must be ≥10 digits or enter UNKNOWN.
4. Tap Save Provider
5. Tap AI Know First — the AI evaluates the provider from public sources and gives you a private report in 4 sections.

What the AI report covers (private — never published)

8. My Meds — Medications

Your complete medication list — prescriptions, supplements, over-the-counter drugs — in one place, always current, always yours.

The Bottle Rotate feature

Hold any pill bottle in front of your phone camera. Slowly rotate it. SafetyBuddy reads the label as it turns and fills the form: drug name, dosage, prescriber, directions, refill information. This works on curved labels that a flat scan would miss.

9. My Appointments

Track every appointment — scheduled, completed, upcoming. Log the provider, location, referral source, purpose, and outcome. Share your appointment record with a care team member via QR code — they scan it on any phone with no SafetyBuddy account needed.

10. Symptom Tracker

The Symptom Tracker is a clinical documentation tool, not a public rating. Tap where it hurts on the body map, set a pain level, add notes. The system builds a time-stamped history of every entry.

11. Quick Learn — Medical Records

Upload any medical record — lab report, imaging summary, discharge paperwork, clinical note. The AI reads it and defines every medical term in context — not a dictionary definition, but what that term means for this specific document. The result is a card-by-card guided learning experience that prepares you to understand your own care.

How it works

1. Add a new record — paste text, upload a PDF, or photograph a document with the ⚡ bolt
2. Tap Quick Learn — AI processes the record and returns a term-by-term explanation
3. Each term appears as a card with a plain-English definition for your specific document
4. Similar definitions are flagged — "These two terms may overlap — confirm with your care team"
5. Share the explained record via PDF or QR code for a second opinion or second set of eyes

12. Vitals Info

A structured health profile — name, date of birth, known conditions, allergies, current medications summary, emergency contacts, blood type, insurance. Store it once; share it in seconds at any point of care.

The QR code encodes your vitals as a compressed bundle in the URL hash — it never touches SafetyBuddy's servers in transit. The doctor's phone decodes it locally in under one second. What they see on screen is identical to what you print.

13. My Cloud — Documents

My Cloud is your personal document vault — test results, insurance cards, referral letters, imaging reports, anything you need in your healthcare life. The problem it solves is universal: "I know I saved it — but what did I name it?"

How the AI search works

1. Upload a file and give it a nickname you'll remember
2. The AI reads the document and adds both clinical terms and lay terms as searchable keywords — the words a patient would use, not just the medical jargon
3. Your hints and the AI's keywords are stored together alongside the document
4. Search later using any word — clinical, plain-language, or partial — and fuzzy matching finds your file even if your memory is imperfect

14. Privacy, Security & Your Data

15. In Memory of Zander