The new iPhone “Health” app – screenshots and analysis

I’ve been waiting eagerly for the release of the “Healthbook” app, and it was finally announced at WWDC earlier today.  The app itself is actually going to be called “Health”.  I actually much preferred the icons that were floating around prior to the announcement (what’s with Apple and the blah icon designs since iOS7?):

Original leaked Healthbook icon (I like it!)

Health app icon (snore)

The app itself is very impressive.  See the gallery below for screenshots of the app:

The first view is pretty empty without any data

Here you can create a medical ID for use in emergencies. The cool thing is that it can be accessed from the emergency dialer. I like it.

You can enter high-level data here…

…and other data like medical conditions, allergies, emergency contacts, and medications. It’s all shareable to selected apps as well. It’s the best application of a shared EHR that I’ve seen to date.

Here’s a high level list of things to save in “My Health” It’s pretty comprehensive and highlights a focus on health above fitness.

Under Fitness, there’s a lot of items to track. There’s a definite focus on steps/running type metrics that many fitness trackers already produce. Note that “NikeFuel” is an item you can track directly in here (hmmm).

For each metric, you can see all the metrics, manually add data, share the data with a provider, and show this metric on your dashboard.

In the “Show All Data” section, it lists the data in a tabular format.

You can choose to share your data from the “Share Data” section.

You can manually add a data point for a given date.

Here’s a few samples. I really let myself go last Wednesday.

This is the “activity count”, which like it says, is just a generic count of activities. Let’s move on.

Here’s a distance tracker for tracking runs. I’m assuming GPS run trackers will be able to automatically add these to “Heath” in the future.

Here are the metrics you can track under “Diagnostics”. So the MedicAlert lady can say “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” AND log it on her iPhone.

Here are lab results you can track. Your uncle Charlie can now accurately log what a drunk he is.

On a more serious note, you can track blood sugar levels.

Here is the manual entry for blood glucose. I can see this being one of the most often used parts of the app (although this might not be cool enough for all the tech bloggers to talk about).

The “Medications” section allows you to track inhaler usage, which I think is a neat idea.

You bascially log the puffs you take from your inhaler. Shout out to Paul from “The Wonder Years” and Mikey from “The Goonies”

The nutrition tracker is pretty interesting. You can check your food log by fiber, sugar, fat, etc.

For this section, I think Apple is depending on third party apps like MyFitnessPal to supply the food logs; the Health app will just graph the results. No one is realistically going to enter all these metrics manually for everything they eat.

The sleep tracker.

You can track hours in bed and hours sleeping (I’m assuming trackers like the FitBit will supply the later information).

The “Vital Signs” section can track the items above. In the keynote, Craig mentioned how the Mayo clinic app could get alerted if, for example, your heart rate dropped dramatically.

The “Me” section just lists some high-level info.

Once you add items to your dashboard, you can track the metrics by day, week, month, or year.

All in all, I had high expectations for this feature and still came away impressed.  Apple, in its typical style, delivered a well-polished product that blows away prior implementations.  A few thoughts:

• So many bloggers and pundits keep harping on the fitness aspects, and what it means for Fitbit, the iWatch, Nike, et al.  But the focus is pretty clearly on health as well as wellness (if not health over wellness), and providing a consolidated view of health is where this thing shines.  In fact, I think Apple might just have become the must-have gadget for Baby Boomers who really need a consolidated view of health (blood pressure, sugar, daily activities, etc).  There are so many medical device manufacturers who should not or cannot invest in software for their connected device, and Apple really offers the best platform for these devices to integrate to.
• I wonder how many fitness aggregators will open themselves up to this platform.  My Fitness Pal is one of the leading food trackers.  Right now, they require other companies to sign an agreement with them to access their API, with its food database and other entries.  If My Fitness Pal feeds this data into the Health app, any other app can grab the data from there without needing to sign anything with My Fitness Pal.  They would be giving up a lot of control to Apple by allowing Health access to their data.  Same goes for other heavyweights like Runkeeper, Fitbit, etc.
• After seeing this app, I’m excited to see what the iWatch is going to offer!