I have been an athlete all my life, but since I’ve reached my 30’s, had 5 reconstructive surgeries, and moved back to the Midwest to a completely sedentary job, staying fit and healthy has become more challenging than ever before.
As an Apple lover for years, I have a myriad of Apps I enlisted to help. Between TargetWEIGHT, MYFitnesspal, MapMyFitness, myWOD, and Nike Fit Band, I have been unsuccessful in maintaining the health and fitness level of my satisfaction.
When I heard about the Apple HealthKit platform and the ability for it to sync with third party application data, the question I posed to myself was, will this help me? I have no chronic illness. I’m not sick. I just want to be healthy. After doing some primitive research, if Apple can pull this off as they say they can, it will revolutionize not just my health technology experience, but the way any doctor in my future will diagnose and treat me.
The Apple HealthKit in addition to the Myhealth App promises to connect Apple Applications & other devices to one another, and to your physician if you choose to. Alleged, my myriad of applications will update one another automatically so I can work (at my nutrition & fitness) smarter and more accurately. Or, if I choose to use the Myhealth, this data will aggregate within the application in a single profile to use and share. Myhealth has 47 different tracking options to help me reach my goals, along with tracking my health milestones and medications/allergies. Furthermore, in case of an emergency, this historical account of my vitals, fitness level, and health milestones such as a chronic illness diagnosis are logged and can be shared with the ER Doctor. This may be critical in saving my life.
I am very conscious however that many folks are extremely uncomfortable with having this type of data in the cloud. I believe this will be a large barrier for Apple along with other 3rd party development partners to overcome. However the technology to keep this information secure exists, and I believe it can be done right. The challenge for Apple is to relay to the public the capabilities of internet security. Now educating Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Y’ers on Cloud Security and gaining the trust to make this Application helpful to all generations may be a challenge and will come with time.
Luckily, as a thirty-something that needs to keep track of my own family’s health along with my aging parent’s health, having health information at my fingertips may not just be convenient but literally may be a life saver. The Mayo Clinic thinks so, they have partnered with Apple along with Epic to make this endeavor successful. You can read more at:
