AURA
The Aura app icon

Palindromic rheumatism, tracked the way it behaves.

Flares arrive, move between joints, and resolve completely. Aura is built around that rather than around a constant ache, so logging one takes under a minute and months of them add up to something you can show a rheumatologist.

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Out now · Free · iPhone, iOS 18 or later

Aura's Today screen: an active flare in the right fingers and wrist at pain level 6 that started eleven hours ago, two of three medication doses taken, and a recent research paper on palindromic flares.

Episodes, not a straight line.

Twelve weeks of a flare log. Some last an afternoon, some last most of a week, and the gaps between them are the part most trackers throw away.

Width is how long it lasted. Height is the pain level logged. Ticks are weeks. Illustration, not real data.

Doses

The times you actually take them.

Add each medication with its own dose times rather than a default the app picked for you. A reminder arrives when one is due, and the day's doses sit on the Today screen, so you can stop trying to remember whether this morning already happened.

Reminders are scheduled on the phone itself. There is no push server involved, and their contents never leave the device.

The medications screen: two of three doses taken today, a schedule showing hydroxychloroquine at 8:04am and naproxen at 9:04am marked taken, and an evening dose still due.

Weather

A percentage needs a denominator.

Aura records the weather every day you open it, not only on the days you flare. That is the difference between "flares on 2 of 18 low pressure days" and a number that is really just describing your local climate.

The comparison stays hidden until enough days have accumulated in more than one pressure band, and it says so plainly when the rate looks the same across all of them.

A chart of flare rate by barometric pressure: flares on 2 of 18 low-pressure days, 4 of 34 normal, and 5 of 32 high, with a note that the rate looks similar across conditions.

Patterns

What keeps coming up, once it has.

Joints and triggers ranked by how often you tagged them, held back entirely until there are enough flares for a ranking to mean anything. Two flares with one of them tagged "alcohol" is not a fifty per cent finding, so you get plain counts until the numbers can carry more.

Frequency is shown across weeks rather than days, because a condition that goes quiet for a fortnight looks like a cure on a daily chart.

Joint and trigger rankings: right fingers in 6 of 11 flares, right wrist in 4 and left knee in 2, with stress the most tagged trigger at 5 of 11 flares.

The rest of the app.

Not everything needs a paragraph. These three are where Aura stops being a diary and starts being useful to somebody else.

The analytics view over 90 days: a note that the right fingers were affected in 5 recent flares and another that stress was tagged in 4, above a flare frequency chart.
When something recursA plain note when a joint or a trigger keeps turning up, sitting above the charts rather than in place of them.
Doctor Mode: a report period starting 17 May 2026, two saved questions about morning stiffness and what else to track, and a button to generate the summary.
Ready for the appointmentThe questions you always forget on the day, and a PDF covering exactly the period your rheumatologist asked about.
The research tab: a recent International Journal of Rheumatic Diseases paper revisiting the approach to palindromic rheumatism, above four more studies and a link to the full list.
Research worth readingNew palindromic rheumatism papers from PubMed Central, and a plain explainer for the people you have to explain it to.

It won't tell you more than it knows.

Most of the work in an app like this is deciding what not to say. Aura holds a number back until the sample can support it, and it never dresses a coincidence up as a cause.

What it does

  • Logs a flare in under a minute: joints, pain, symmetry, and what you think set it off.
  • Ranks the joints, triggers and symptoms that keep recurring.
  • Compares flare days against the days you were fine.
  • Schedules medication reminders locally, at your own dose times.
  • Reads sleep, heart rate, HRV and activity from Apple Health, and only reads.
  • Pulls new palindromic rheumatism papers from PubMed Central.

What it doesn't

  • Predict a flare. Nothing can, and an app that suggests otherwise is guessing.
  • Quote a percentage off the back of two or three flares.
  • Send anything you log to a server. There isn't one.
  • Carry analytics, advertising, or any third-party library at all.
  • Diagnose, treat, or offer anything resembling medical advice.

Aura is not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat or prevent any condition, and nothing it shows is medical advice. Any pattern it reports is descriptive only. Read the privacy policy.

On the App Store now.

Free, no account, and nothing to sign up for. Log the next one and the record starts building itself.

Download on the App Store