Apple unveiled its new IOS 8 last month at its Worldwide Developers Conference and one of the many new features incorporated into the innovative software release is the HealthKit framework.HealthKit provides the platform, tools and environment for healthcare app developers to create apps that are able to communicate with IOS 8, thus providing a way for developers to collect, store and present various types of consumer, patient, health and fitness data.
Apple used a brand new Mayo Clinic app as an example of what users could expect from what seems like a very powerful advancement in personal healthcare management. A blog post on the Mayo Clinic website stated: “Integrating with Apple’s new HealthKit, Mayo Clinic patients and consumers will be able to more easily access personalized health information, guidance and care when they need it. Mayo Clinic patients will continue to securely access their patient information and services, but in the future, they will increasingly be able to organize and act on their health and wellness data in a more seamless manner. Users will be able to monitor various HealthKit parameters through an easy-to-interpret dashboard, which highlights trends and flags values that may need attention.”
One example of current health app frustration was written in a Forbes article: “Type 1 diabetic Anna McCollister-Slipp who described her personal frustration with device interoperability at the West Health event earlier this year. Multiple medical devices and apps â none of which communicate with each other (let alone with her providers) makes her daily (often hourly) routine excruciating. Especially since the technology behind sharing digitized data is relatively easy.”
The unveiling of HealthKit did not go without some controversy, several third party developers felt as though Apple’s new release is actually competitive with already existing and available third party apps, making their dissatisfaction with Apple known.
