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Apple officially introduces iOS 8 “Healthkit” platform & “Health” app

Following our reports earlier this year that exclusively revealed details and screenshots of Apple’s Healthbook app, Apple today just officially announced the app confirming the details of our reports. Apple’s new platform, codenamed Healthbook, will be officially known as ‘HealthKit’ on the developer side of things, and will come with an accompanying app for iOS 8 called ‘Health’.

We believe Apple’s HealthKit will revolutionize how the health industry interacts with people. We are pround to be ar the forefront of this 9innovative technology with the Mayo Clinic app. – Dr John H. Noseworthy, CEO, Mayo Clinic

As we detailed extensively in our previous reports, the Healthbook app in iOS 8 is used as a central location on the device to track data from apps and devices used for recording health and fitness related data. Apple detailed how it’s working with fitness app developers like Nike to integrate the Healthkit platform into their fitness tracking apps, and it’s also working with the Mayo Clinic and others in the healthcare field to enable integration with Apple’s new Health tracking app and their own iOS apps.

Apple didn’t spend a lot of time talking about the platform, and it hasn’t yet provided details on whether or not it will be open to developers or just to its own partners.

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Comments

  1. michaelbraun - 10 years ago

    They are also partnering with Epic (http://www.epic.com), an EMR company that serves a lot of the major hospital networks in the US. It will be interesting what kinds of data flow back and forth between the two systems. One possibility: You could keep your medical data with you, so that you when/if you go to another doctor, she could load all your past health data.

  2. How HealthKit could look and feel in iOS ecosystem:
    https://www.behance.net/gallery/15373141/Healthbook-iOS-8-concept

  3. herb02135go - 10 years ago

    SF Chronicle:
    ” … Samsung Electronics Co. incorporated fitness-related features in its latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S5.”

    • kobymac - 10 years ago

      And galaxy s4 and galaxy s3. The difference being they have a hardware line, apple does not. Whether they’re good or not, I dont know, never used them. I guess if I’m ever going to bother getting serious about health monitoring, I dont want to use multiple apps just to have them summarized in yet another app. Seems to go against Apples philosophy of keeping it simple. Also too much manual input required. Seing as it doesn’t immediately appear that Health supports all of the features the iwatch was suppose to do (could be wrong), my interest in the iwatch has drained. I suspect they tried to bite off more that they could chew and have had to resort to using third party software and hardware to get any functionality.

      One other thing that’s guaranteed, is apple is once again going to have a new app that only really functions in the USA. All of the doctor interaction stuff just isn’t going to take off anywhere else, particularly in Australia. For a company that makes billions of dollars in overseas markets and gives back next to zero in tax, the least they could do is give us products that function just as well as they do at home.

  4. pround has to be corrected.

    very interested!!!

  5. rahhbriley - 10 years ago

    Looks like @Mark Gruman was getting misleading and incomplete info on Healthbook. He seemed very smug about his exclusive knowledge that he kept “breaking.”

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.