iOS 8 HealthKit
The health tracking industry was previously dominated by companies like Garmin and Fit bit but the health monitoring and fitness gadget sector is being taken by storm by new smartphones and accessories which offer various apps and features that help integrated these previously separate gadgets into the smartphone.
In light of this, Apple released iOS 8 with a very robust Healthkit App. It is an app designed and integrated with iOS 8 to help track your everybody metric from weight, caloric intake, cholesterol, sugar, and many more. This feature not only allows you to effortlessly list down your daily medical records, but it also helps you understand your overall state of health with informative graphs and fitness assessments. It also allows you to easily share collated health data and medical history so medical personnel can help you better in case of an emergency.
Healthkit was designed to be the central hub for all your health records and needs. This is a marked improvement over previous efforts where your data is spread out between different apps that help track your health. With various and separate apps, the user would have to manage and collate the data themselves, which defeats the purpose of this so-called convenience.
As a centralized hub, Apple designed the health kit to be the primary source of personal health data as well as the singular app where all health data is ultimately stored. To help illustrate this feature, let’s look at a day in Mike’s shoes:
1. Mike’s morning workouts app gathers personal health information from the Healthkit to create the right fitness workout profile for him. This will take into account important health data like current weight, caloric intake trends, etc. Mike would no longer have to input this data himself.
2. Mike would use the app’s workout and health programs to help improve his overall health status.
3. The app would then collate all the data from the workout and report it to Healthkit, updating the user’s personal health data with new stats and results of the workout.
4. Mike would then use several other supported fitness apps from the App Store during other times of the day.
5. The other apps will collect data from the Healthkit and then send the results back to Healthkit after use.
At the end of the day, Mike would have all the data and results from his other apps collated and illustrated in a singular app – the Healthkit, without having to input and collate the data himself, turning the whole thing into an automatic process.