What This Skill Can Actually Do
A few days ago, I was chatting with a friend. He said his dad had chest pain in the middle of the night, and he frantically searched his phone for the hospital number—only to find a number from two years ago... He was so frustrated he almost wanted to develop a tool on the spot. Later, he discovered this skill, and I thought it was really practical, so I decided to share it.
So, What Exactly Can This Skill Do?
In simple terms, it consolidates all your elderly family members' emergency contact information and medical records into one place, and you can pull it up with a single chat command. For example, if you send "cấp cứu" (Vietnamese for "emergency"), the skill will pop up a complete dashboard: emergency number 115, police 113, fire 114, the name, phone number, and distance of the nearest hospital, and your family doctor's contact info. At the same time, it will display the elderly person's medical summary—blood type, drug allergies, chronic conditions. When you call 120, you just read straight from the screen instead of scrambling to remember.
My own grandmother is 90 years old, has trouble walking, and suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes. I used to write this information on a sticky note attached to the refrigerator, but if I wasn't home, the caregiver might not find it. With this skill, every family member can access the same information from their phone, and it can be updated at any time.
This skill was originally designed for Vietnamese, but the field names are in JSON format. You can write the contact names in Chinese, such as "Beijing Union Hospital," "Family Doctor Zhang." The national emergency numbers 115/113/114 are hardcoded, but you can add local numbers like 120 or 110 through custom contacts. However, note that the default "115" in the skill is the Vietnamese emergency number. If you are using it in China, you may need to modify the logic or add a "120" custom contact yourself.
Installation and Configuration Are Quite Simple
This skill runs on a certain bot framework (I won't go into details—the installation command is as follows):
npx skills add https://github.com/nclamvn/bom-cham --skill eldercare-emergency-contactsAfter installation, you need to create two "memory keys." Simply put, these are two JSON data blocks—one stores contacts, and the other stores medical records.
Contacts
The example shows a scenario in Bien Hoa City, Dong Nai Province, Vietnam. You can easily change the address to your own. For instance:
{
"location": {
"city": "Beijing",
"province": "Beijing",
"address": "Building 3, XX Residential Area, Chaoyang District, Beijing"
},
"nearest_hospital": {
"name": "Beijing Chaoyang Hospital",
"phone": "010-85231000",
"address": "No. 8 Gongti South Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing",
"emergency_phone": "010-85231000",
"distance_km": 3
},
"family_doctor": {
"name": "Dr. Zhang",
"phone": "13800138000",
"clinic": "Community Health Center"
},
"pharmacy": {
"name": "Laobaixing Pharmacy",
"phone": "400-xxx-xxxx"
},
"custom_contacts": [
{
"role": "Neighbor Aunt Wang",
"name": "Wang Xiuying",
"phone": "13512345678",
"note": "Has my house key and can help open the door"
}
]
}Medical Records
The medical archive is a similar JSON block, recording the elderly person's basic information, illnesses, and medications. For example:
{
"name": "Grandma Li",
"age": 85,
"date_of_birth": "1939-05-20",
"blood_type": "A",
"allergies": ["Penicillin", "Cephalosporins"],
"chronic_conditions": ["Hypertension", "Coronary Heart Disease"],
"current_medications": [
"Nifedipine sustained-release tablets 30mg (morning)",
"Aspirin 100mg (evening)"
],
"mobility": "Walks a few steps with a cane",
"hearing": "Normal",
"vision": "Presbyopia, needs glasses",
"weight_kg": 55,
"special_notes": "Blood pressure tends to be high in the morning; get up slowly",
"insurance": {
"type": "Medical Insurance",
"number": "1234567890",
"hospital": "Chaoyang Hospital"
}
}Real-World Usage Scenarios and Experience
Last week, I deliberately tested it. First, I sent the message "cấp cứu." The skill immediately returned the following panel (I slightly modified it to Chinese):
🚨 Emergency Contacts
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📞 Emergency: 120
📞 Police: 110
📞 Fire: 119
🏥 Nearest Hospital: ...It displayed the hospital name, phone number, distance, family doctor information, and the comprehensive medical summary of the elderly person—all in one glance. The great thing is that this information remains consistent across all family members' phones, and whenever I need to update a medication or a contact, I just edit the JSON block directly, and everyone gets the latest version automatically.
For example, if Grandma develops a new allergic reaction or changes her medication, I simply modify the current_medications or allergies fields in the medical JSON. After saving, the next time anyone in the family sends the emergency command, the updated data appears. This is much more reliable than a paper note on the refrigerator or a text file on someone's phone.
Another practical use is when the elderly person is traveling and needs to visit a hospital in a different city. You can pre-configure the nearest_hospital field to match the destination address. The skill is designed to be flexible; you can have multiple memory keys for different locations if you wish, though the simplest way is to update the single key.
Of course, the skill does require a bit of initial setup—filling in the JSON data. But once done, it's a one-time effort. You can even involve other family members to help maintain the data, as long as they have access to the bot platform.
If you're not familiar with JSON, don't worry. The structure is straightforward. The bot framework used here is very popular among developers; you can also find community templates that you can copy and paste, then simply replace the sample Chinese addresses and phone numbers with your own. The only technical step is running the single-line installation command, which you can do on any server or even a local machine with Node.js installed.
Finally, I want to emphasize that this isn't just a tech demo—it's a genuinely useful tool for anyone caring for elderly parents or grandparents. The peace of mind knowing that everyone in the family can instantly access critical medical and contact information during an emergency is invaluable. I've already set it up for my own family, and my parents, who are not tech-savvy, find it easy to use. They just remember the command "cấp cứu" (or we can change it to "emergency" in English), and it works.
I highly recommend giving it a try. The installation takes less than five minutes, and filling in the two JSON blocks with your family's details might take another ten. That's a small investment for a tool that could save precious minutes in a real emergency.
