What the Emergency Contact Card Maker does
This makes a wallet-sized emergency card: who you are, who to ring, and the medical details you choose to include. The card is drawn and printed at 85.60 x 53.98 mm - ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1, the bank-card size - so it fits a wallet without being trimmed by hand, and the same details can be downloaded as a vCard so the contacts land in a phone as dialable entries.
Everything happens in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and the privacy warning is shown before the export buttons will do anything, because a card like this is exactly as private as the wallet it lives in. Put on it only what you would be content for a stranger who finds your wallet to read.
How to use it
- Enter the name that should appear on the card, and optionally a date of birth, a town or address and your own mobile number.
- Add one or more emergency contacts with their relationship to you. Write the numbers in international form, starting with a +, so they can be dialled from another country.
- Add any medical details you want on the card - blood group, allergies, medication, conditions, your doctor, an insurance policy. Every one of these is optional.
- Check the preview. The front carries who you are and who to ring; the back carries the medical details. Warnings tell you about anything too long to read at card size.
- Read the privacy note, tick the box, then print at 100% - no "fit to page" - or download the vCard. Cut out, fold or glue the two faces together, and keep the card where someone would look for identification.
Reading the results
The front is the part that matters in the first minute: a name and a number that somebody can ring. Keep it short enough to read at arm's length.
The back is context rather than instruction. A printed blood group is never used to transfuse - hospitals type and cross-match blood themselves - but it is useful background, as are allergies and current medication.
Warnings are about legibility and dialling, not correctness. Nothing here can check whether any detail is true, and the page says so on the card itself.
The vCard contains your details, the emergency contacts as RELATED;TYPE=emergency entries, and one separate contact card per person, prefixed "ICE -" so they sort together in a phone's address book.
Worked example: a card for someone with a condition worth mentioning
The front reads: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, Priya Raman, born 1989-04-17, Leeds LS6, then two contacts - Arjun Raman (husband) +44 7700 900456 and Sara Okoye (colleague) +44 7700 900789.
The back reads: blood group O+, allergies penicillin and peanuts, medication levothyroxine 75 mcg daily, condition type 1 diabetes, doctor Hill Road Surgery on 0113 496 0000, insurance Example Travel Cover ETC-4471-99, registered organ donor.
That is eleven short lines, all of which fit legibly at 85.60 x 53.98 mm. The vCard for the same details comes out as three cards - one for Priya carrying both contacts as RELATED;TYPE=emergency and a NOTE with the medical details, and one each for Arjun and Sara so a phone can dial them.
The type 1 diabetes line is the reason the card exists: someone found confused or unconscious is a very different problem if a responder knows to check blood glucose. The insurance line is the reason to think before including it - a policy number is useful abroad and is also the kind of thing you would rather not lose with a wallet.
Formulas and scoring rules
- Card size
85.60 mm x 53.98 mm, ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1The same size as a bank card. Print at 100% scale; "fit to page" will shrink it.- vCard line folding
lines longer than 75 octets are split and continued with CRLF + one spaceRFC 6350 section 3.2. The octet count is of the UTF-8 encoding, so accented characters and emoji count for more than one.- vCard escaping
backslash, comma, semicolon and newline are escaped as \\ \, \; and \nRFC 6350 section 3.4, applied before folding.- Structured name
N:family;given;additional;prefix;suffixA single-word name goes in the given-name slot rather than having a family name guessed for it.- Emergency relation
RELATED;TYPE=emergency;VALUE=text:..."emergency" is one of the relation types RFC 6350 defines in section 6.6.6.
What to put on it, and what to leave off
The useful minimum is a name and one number somebody will answer. After that, include what would change how you were treated: a serious allergy, a condition such as epilepsy or diabetes, an implanted device, anticoagulants or other medication that matters, and whether you are an organ donor.
Be more careful with anything that is useful to a thief rather than to a paramedic. A full home address, a passport or insurance number, or a list that amounts to a medical history are all things a lost wallet hands over. A town rather than a street, and an insurer's name rather than the policy number, are often the right trade.
A card is not a medical alert, and not a record
Emergency services look for identification and will read what they find, but a printed card is unverified information from an unknown source. For a condition where treatment must change immediately - severe anaphylaxis, anticoagulant therapy, an implanted device - a medical alert bracelet or a national alert scheme is designed to be noticed and trusted in a way a wallet card is not.
The card is also worth pairing with what is on your phone. Both Android and iOS let you put emergency contacts and medical information on the lock screen, which is found faster than a wallet. This page's vCard covers the contacts half of that; the medical information is set in the phone's own health settings.
Limitations: what the result does not prove
- Nothing here is verified. The card carries what you typed, and it says so on the card - it is not a medical record, an ID document or proof of insurance.
- A blood group on a card is not used to transfuse. Hospitals type and cross-match blood themselves, every time.
- Emergency responders are not obliged to read it or to act on it. For conditions where minutes matter, use a recognised medical alert as well.
- The card is only found if someone looks. It is lost with the wallet, and it does not update when your details change - reprint it when they do.
- Nothing is stored: reload the page and the details are gone. That is deliberate, and it means there is no saved copy to come back to.
Privacy: where your data goes
Everything you paste, type or drop is processed in this browser tab. It is not uploaded, logged, stored or sent to analytics. Session recording and tag-manager scripts are switched off on this page.
Standards and sources
- RFC 6350 - vCard format specification - checked 19 Sep 2026
- RFC 3966 - the tel URI for telephone numbers
- ISO/IEC 7810 - identification cards, physical characteristics
- NHS - organ donation and the register
Frequently asked questions
What should an emergency contact card include?
At minimum your name and one contact who will answer, with their relationship to you. Beyond that, include only what would change your treatment: serious allergies, current medication, conditions such as diabetes or epilepsy, an implanted device, and your doctor. Leave off anything that is more use to someone who steals the wallet than to a paramedic.
What size should a wallet emergency card be?
The bank-card size, 85.60 by 53.98 mm, defined by ISO/IEC 7810 as ID-1. This page draws and prints at exactly that, so print at 100% scale rather than "fit to page" and the card will slot into a wallet without trimming.
What does ICE mean on a phone or card?
In Case of Emergency. The convention began as a way of marking which number in a phone's contacts should be rung, and it works on paper for the same reason: it tells a stranger, without explanation, which of the names in front of them to call first.
Should I put my blood group on the card?
You can, and it is useful context, but do not expect it to be used for a transfusion. Hospitals type and cross-match blood themselves in every case, because a card cannot be trusted with a decision of that consequence. Allergies and current medication are generally more useful to a responder.
Is it safe to carry medical details in my wallet?
That is your judgement to make, and it is a genuine trade-off: the information helps only if it is found, and whoever finds it can read all of it. A reasonable middle way is to name a condition and a doctor without listing a full history, and to keep policy and document numbers off the card.
What is a vCard, and what do I do with the file?
A .vcf file is the standard contact format described by RFC 6350. Open it on a phone or email it to yourself and your address book will offer to import it: you get a card for yourself carrying the emergency contacts, plus one card per contact prefixed "ICE -" so they group together.
Does this page store or send my details?
No. The card, the preview and the .vcf file are all produced in your browser; there is no upload, no account and no saved copy. Close the tab and everything is gone, which is why the page asks you to confirm you have read the privacy note before it will export anything.
Should I use this instead of a medical alert bracelet?
As well as, not instead of. A bracelet or necklace is designed to be seen immediately by a responder who has not yet opened your wallet, which matters for anaphylaxis, anticoagulants, implanted devices and similar. The wallet card carries the detail a bracelet has no room for.
Last reviewed by the A2Z.Tools team against the sources listed above.
