Origin. Flare was born from a Google Sheet. Its author spent six months tracking his own chronic pain three times a day, trying to find patterns and get answers from doctors who were not always inclined to listen. The spreadsheet worked. The patterns emerged. The doctors paid attention. Flare is the native version of that spreadsheet, given back to the communities still suffering.

Co-founder. Mary Carol Jennings, MD, MPH — a Johns Hopkins–trained physician and population health specialist — is co-founder of Flare. Her discipline is measurement: what is worth recording, what a record can honestly claim, and what a clinician can actually use in the ten minutes of an appointment. The application’s restraint is largely her doing.

Description. Flare is a privacy-first chronic symptom tracker. It began with a single stubborn case of chronic pain and now supports a range of conditions, including back pain, fibromyalgia, migraine, and arthritis. The application tracks symptoms, medications, treatments, doctor visits, and milestones over time, and presents them as a visual timeline that makes patterns visible to both the user and their physician.

The Job. People living with chronic pain are often dismissed by the medical system. Flare is evidence. It is a case file the user can bring to a doctor and say: I am not lying. Here is six months of data. Help me. Every design decision in the application serves that job.

How It Works. The user logs symptoms up to three times a day — morning, afternoon, and evening — using a named severity scale:

  SEVERITY SCALE
  -----------------------------------------------
  None      [         ]   No symptoms present
  Bearable  [  #       ]   Present but ignorable
  Mild      [  ##      ]   Noticeable, not limiting
  Moderate  [  ###     ]   Interferes with activity
  Severe    [  ####    ]   Stops activity entirely
  -----------------------------------------------
  A severe day is completable in under 10 seconds.
  There are no streaks. There is no guilt.

The application presents five principal surfaces:

1. Check-in. The daily entry screen. Tap a symptom, select a severity, move on. Auto-saves on each interaction — no save button, no friction. Retroactive logging is permitted and expected; the application never penalizes a late entry.
2. Timeline. The hero screen. A color-coded grid: rows are days, columns are symptoms, medications, and activities. Each cell is a severity pill. The picture builds itself over days and weeks. In landscape mode the grid becomes a line chart.
3. Trends. A flare calendar (heatmap of moderate-or-worse days), severity gradient, time-of-day patterns, and co-occurrence analysis (which symptoms tend to cluster together). Date-range filters from 7 days to all time.
4. Visits. A doctor appointment manager. Log upcoming and past visits, prepare questions in advance, add notes afterward. Overdue appointments surface a gentle prompt. Visits appear on the timeline as stethoscope markers.
5. Export. Generate a formatted PDF or CSV for a doctor, therapist, or the user's own records. Toggle layers: symptoms, medications, treatments, milestones, notes. Select a date range. Share directly or save to Files.

A simplified representation of the timeline follows:

         Pain    Exer    PT     Running
  Today  [Brbl]  [####]  [####]  [####]
  3/28   [None]    +       +       +
  3/27   [Brbl]    +       +       +
  3/26   [Mild]    +       +       +
  3/25   [Mod ]    +     [####]    +
  3/24   [Mild]  [####]    +     [####]
  3/23   [Mild]    +       +       +
  3/22   [Mod ]    +       +     [####]
  3/21   [Sev ]  [####]  [####]    +
  ----------------------------------------
  250 sessions. This is great data.

Design Principles.

• No guilt, no gamification. There are no streaks that punish gaps, no badges, no congratulatory copy. A gap in logging is normal. The application does not comment on it.
• Named severity, not numbers. The scale is always "Mild," never "3 out of 10." Words carry meaning in a doctor's office; numbers invite negotiation.
• The timeline is the product. When in doubt, the question is: does this help the user bring better data to their appointment?
• Color-blind accessible. A blue-to-orange sequential palette is available for users with deuteranopia, protanopia, or tritanopia.
• Calm witness. The tone is quiet, non-judgmental, clinical but warm. The application is a reliable witness, not a coach.

Privacy & Storage. All symptom data, medication logs, visit records, and notes are stored locally on the user's device in a SwiftData store backed by SQLite. Nothing is sent to a remote server by Flare. The application does not require an account, does not use iCloud, and does not transmit health data to any third party. Anonymous usage analytics are collected via TelemetryDeck (no personal or health data is included). The user may export a full backup to a JSON file at any time and restore from it on the same or a different device.

Flare Pro. The base application is free and includes unlimited check-ins, the full timeline, basic export, doctor visits, and all configuration. An optional Flare Pro subscription unlocks:

• Time-of-day heatmap — when do symptoms peak?
• Co-occurrence analysis — which symptoms tend to appear together?

Supported Conditions. During onboarding the user selects a condition category, which seeds appropriate symptoms, medications, and milestone types:

• Pelvic pain
• Back pain
• Fibromyalgia
• Migraine
• Arthritis
• Other (fully customizable)

Not a Medical Device. Flare does not provide medical advice, diagnoses, or treatment recommendations. It is not a substitute for the services of a qualified physician. It is a tool for organizing and presenting the user's own observations.

Inquiries. Write to info@figstudiollc.com. Privacy policy and terms of service are available at figstudiollc.com.