The Alcohol Tracker app tracks a person's drinking habits on both a daily and weekly basis. That means users will be notified not only if they have too much to drink at Thursday's happy hour, but also if, come Tuesday, they've already consumed the recommended maximum amount of alcohol for the entire week.
Users simply tell the app how many beers, glasses of wine or shots they’ve consumed, and the app does the rest. Since these different beverages contain varying amounts of alcohol, the app converts every drink into a certain number of alcohol "units," based on guidelines established by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the United Kingdom and the Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments.
Most alcohol-consumption guidelines recommend different limits for men and women. The U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) recommends that women have no more than two to three units of alcohol a day, which is roughly equivalent to about 6 ounces (175 milliliters) of wine a day, according to the NHS. For men, the daily recommended maximum is slightly higher, at three to four units, which is equivalent to 19 ounces, or about a pint of strong beer or cider a day. (In terms of bottles of beer, that's less than two 12-ounce bottles.)
In addition to helping users track their alcohol intake, the new app also features links to resources that might help heavy drinkers cut back, such as the phone number for an alcohol help line. The app's developers also built in several tools aimed at helping users limit their consumption, including a questionnaire that helps people determine their risk of alcohol misuse.