Health is the name of a new feature that comes with iOS 8 and serves as a repository for all health related data collected by iPhone, applications and accessories. It is also a visual way of presenting the data that allows you to make decisions about it.
To facilitate all this interconnection between the iPhone and the applications and accessories that make up Health, Apple has created the HealthKit for developers and manufacturers.
Until now, applications collected all kinds of data, whether from accessories, or directly by entering data or monitoring activity, in any case, this data remained in each of the applications and they had no greater usefulness and life than the application itself granted them.
Taking into account that there is not only monitoring of exercise, but also about sleep, diet, nutrition, mood, medication, etc. These data together give a complete overview and most valuable of our health than your individual worth.
Health as a user
Health is the front-end of the HealthKit. Includes a data entry section. From here you can view the tabs quickly and easily through groupings by day, week, month and year.
There is a data section (Health data) that allows you to see all the following data;
- There, all without discrimination.
- Body Measurements, stores your body measurements including fat percentage, body mass index, height and weight.
- Medications, all the medication that we are taking continuously.
- Lab results, a compendium of medical analytical results that can serve as a reference.
- Fitness includes calories burned, distance, rest times, and steps.
- Me allows you to enter the date of birth, biological sex, and blood group.
- Nutrition stores a long list of foods, with their properties and mineral and vitamin content.
- Results stores a wide variety of results such as those from the blood alcohol test or the blood oxygenation index.
- Sleep stores data from sleep cycle analysis.
- vitals rtracks blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, and breathing rate.
Each data sets has its graph, which has the ability to show, add and share the rest of the data groups, as well as a switch to put them on or off the board.
The section Sources lists the apps and accessories that are currently connected to Health through the HealthKit. With time you can grant and revoke permissions for other applications and accessories to access your data. This section is useful for check and clean occasionally.
The section of Medical ID (medical identification) allows create a card on the lock screen It shows your date of birth, medical conditions, medical notes, allergies, medications in use, contacts, blood type, if you are an organ donor, weight and height. None of this data is included in the data shared with other applications, but it will be visible in the event of a medical emergency, as in the case of wearing a medical alert bracelet, each of us will have to weigh the risks and benefits that you can contribute this section.
Health Partners
Both Health and HealthKit are an ambitious bet, but Apple has its even higher goals for both. This is why it has been associated with Mayo ClinicFor example, to integrate HealthKit like this, for example, a patient's blood pressure reading is automatically compared to expectations and if something is wrong, their doctor is immediately alerted for follow-up.
Apple has also partnered with Epic systems, which provides the software to hospitals serving hundreds of millions of Americans, so patients at many large institutions will be able to use Health as a faster way to share their information with their doctors.
Privacy
As we all know, lcomfort is in perpetual conflict with safety and privacy. A place where all our data, from different applications and accessories, can remain together, not only presents a new challenge for us security, but for the management by third parties, such as health professionals who could make use of them. but they require the compliance with a regulation.
Since health data is incredibly sensitive, Apple goes further in its permission-granting system so that we can authorize or deny access based on object type. Thus, if an application only needs a specific type of data, we can only authorize this data and not give it access to anything else.
