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In rough order of how often it is the cause: not enough light, the label is curved around a cylinder, the camera is closer than it can focus, or the label is worn.

Try backing off to 15–20 cm and letting the camera settle before moving closer. For a curved label, come at it square to the centre of the barcode rather than at an angle. For a 2D square code (Data Matrix), fill more of the frame than feels necessary.

If it still will not read, use ⋯ → Enter identifier by hand and type the number printed under the barcode. That path is fully supported, not a consolation prize — the lookup and everything after it work identically.

The scanner reads Data Matrix, QR, PDF417, Aztec, Code 128, Code 39, Code 93, Codabar, Interleaved 2-of-5, ITF-14, EAN-8, EAN-13, UPC-E and their variants — which covers what appears on medical and dental equipment in practice.

Of those, the ones carrying a UDI are usually a GS1 code (Data Matrix or Code 128, often starting (01)) or a HIBCC code (starting +). Both are parsed fully, including the production data packed inside them: serial number, lot, expiry and manufacturing date where the label includes them.

You have scanned another unit of the same product — five identical handpieces share one device identifier, because the identifier describes the product, not the individual item. Choose Add another unit and give it a label such as Op 3 or the serial number. That is exactly what the prompt is for.

Open the iOS Settings app → BiomedPortal → Camera. Manual entry works either way.

Almost certainly not. AccessGUDID covers devices whose labelers were required to submit a record, and the requirement phased in over several years. Capital equipment that predates it — an older autoclave, a delivery unit, a compressor — is frequently absent, and so are many non-US products.

The device is still saved. Type the make and model yourself and it becomes a full record: searchable, photographable, and backed up like any other.

The lookup needs an internet connection and depends on a US government service that is occasionally down for maintenance. The scan is never lost when this happens — the device is saved with what you have, and you can run the lookup again later from the device's own screen.

BiomedPortal shows the record exactly as the labeler submitted it to the FDA; it does not edit or fill gaps. Blank fields mean the labeler left them blank. Anything you type yourself — make, model, serial, location — is kept separately and is never overwritten by a lookup.

Corrections to the underlying record have to be made by the labeler, through the FDA's GUDID system.

The usual cause is that the PDF is a scan of paper. It looks like text to you and is a picture to the phone, so there is nothing to read. The manual is still attached and still opens — only the automatic extraction is unavailable, and the device screen says so rather than pretending it found nothing.

Where you can, download the manufacturer's own PDF from their website rather than scanning a printed copy.

Single manuals are capped at 60 MB so that one enormous scan cannot fill the phone. Manufacturer PDFs are almost always well under this; scanned ones often are not. Recompress it, or attach only the service section.

Roughly: a label photo is around 1 MB, and a typical manufacturer manual 5–10 MB. A practice with 80 devices, a label photo for each and manuals for half comes to somewhere near 400 MB. The current total is shown on the Back up & restore screen.

If space is tight, leave manuals out of the backup file — they can be downloaded again from the manufacturer, and your own photos cannot.

On the old phone: ⋯ → Back up & restore, choose a passphrase, Create backup, then Save backup file and put it somewhere both phones can reach — Files, a drive, AirDrop.

On the new phone: install BiomedPortal, open ⋯ → Back up & restore → Restore from a backup file, pick the file and enter the passphrase.

Restoring only ever adds. It will not overwrite or delete anything already on the phone, so running it twice is harmless.

The file cannot be opened. This is not a policy we can make an exception to — the encryption key is derived from the passphrase and the passphrase is stored nowhere, so there is no key and no back door. If the phone still has the inventory, make a fresh backup with a passphrase you record properly.

Either the wrong file was picked — a backup ends in .bmpx — or the file was altered in transit. Some mail and chat services rewrite attachments. Re-export and move the file through Files or AirDrop instead.

Not without writing something to decrypt it, and that is the intended trade-off — the file is encrypted precisely so that nobody can. What is inside, once decrypted, is a plain JSON inventory followed by the attachment files, so nothing about the format traps your data in this app permanently.

⋯ → About & privacy → Delete all equipment data. Every record, photo, manual and extracted fact goes immediately. Deleting the app does the same thing. Neither touches a backup file you saved elsewhere — delete that yourself.

No. There is no server and no account. See the privacy policy for exactly what does and does not leave the device.