Gather what exists, split it by person, sort it by kind, and keep it current — a method that works on paper or on a phone.
By The Lumy team ·
This is a method, not a product pitch. It works with a cardboard box and a marker, with a folder structure on a laptop, or with an app — the order of the steps is what makes it stick. Set aside an afternoon for the first pass; afterwards it costs about a minute per appointment.
Decide two things first, because changing them halfway is what usually causes an attempt like this to be abandoned.
Empty the drawer, the folder, the email searches for 'results' and 'appointment', the downloads directory, and the camera roll. Do not judge or sort yet — sorting while gathering is how people stop after the first shelf.
One stack per member of the household. If a document covers two people, it belongs to the person it is about, not the person who collected it.
Lab reports, imaging reports, prescriptions, visit summaries, referrals, discharge papers, vaccinations, insurance. Six to eight kinds is plenty; more categories mean more decisions later, and decisions are what you are trying to remove.
Within each kind, order by date, most recent at the front. The question asked in a consulting room is almost always about the most recent one.
Photograph or scan anything that exists only on paper — a vaccination card, a discharge letter, a hand-written note. Keep the paper as well; the copy is for finding, the original is for proving.
If you are working with digital files, a name like 2026-03-14-anna-blood-test-city-clinic.pdf finds itself. results_final_2.pdf does not. Date first, then person, then what it is, then where it came from.
Any follow-up, review or repeat prescription that has not happened yet goes on a calendar with a reminder you choose. This is the part that keeps the archive from going stale.
From now on, every document gets filed the day it arrives. One minute, once per appointment, is the entire maintenance cost — and it is the only thing standing between you and doing this again next year.
The method above is the product's shape. Lumy Family Health Records keeps a separate record for each person you care for, takes a document as a photograph, a multi-page scan or a file you already have, asks you to confirm whose it is and what kind it is before saving, and then lets you search by name, clinic, category or the text saved from the document. Visits, follow-ups and medication times sit in the same record, with reminder times you choose.
It has not launched. If the method here is one you want to stop doing by hand, the waitlist is the way to hear when it is ready.
One email, when it is ready. Nothing else.
This is not medical advice — consult a healthcare professional. Lumy Family Health Records organizes your documents and dates; it does not interpret them.