First Batch Of HealthKit Apps Arrive For iOS 8.0.2

The Health app you see on your iPhone with iOS 8 installed is the hub for Apple’s much heralded, by Apple of course, Healthkit.  Better yet, if you’ve installed the new iOS 8.0.2 then HealthKit will actually now work!

I’ve spent several hours over the last 2 days trying to get my head around this new Apple app to see how it works, what it does, how it integrates with all the 3rd party health apps and most of all to see if it’s useful.

I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on it now and I do think it’s very useful and will only get better in the future – maybe even invaluable from an overall health and fitness perspective.  I’m going to do my best here to try and explain as simply as I can what HealthKit is all about. First, forget this confusing app title HealthKit as there’s no such thing. What Apple calls HealthKit simply appears as an app called "Health" on your iPhone screen.

The Health App on iPhone collects health data from a series of 3rd party apps

The HealthKit moniker appears to be Apple’s way of describing what the “Health” app actually does – it gathers health and fitness data collected by 3rd party apps  then organizes and displays everything in one place using an easy to access Dashboard display. That’s right – Health collects activity, diet, sleep, medical and all kinds of other health related data and makes it available in one place and in one format.

Apple’s Health App can track Steps & Walking/Running without 3rd party apps The graphs above show my Step and Walking numbers for the past 2 days

This was the part that confused me at first because the Health App by itself didn’t appear to do anything other than record my age, weight, height etc. It wasn’t until Apple unleashed the first wave of Health and Fitness apps on Monday morning that I was finally able to download a few of them and figure out what was actually going on here.

The first wave of Health Apps for iPhones – I installed the white box apps

To start off, I downloaded one of the newly released Health apps called MotionX-24/7. Along with measuring your active heartbeat and sleep patterns, this app, like most activity trackers, kept track of how many steps you take each day. When I looked at the display it showed steps taken for the 7 days prior to installing this app. What the heck?  How could that be?  I hadn’t entered that data. I soon unraveled another mystery.

My Heat Beat while resting as measured by MotionX 24/7 Heartbeat is measured by holding a finger to the iPhone’s camera lens

The Apple Health app has a built-in capability to track the daily steps you take and it had been working away silently in the background counting my steps for a week without me having a clue. The Step counter of Health runs in the background using an Apple motion-sensor chip and uses very, very little battery life. It turns our that the connection between 3rd Party Apps and Apple Health is a 2-way street so by my installing MotionX it simply accessed Health and imported a week’s worth of Steps.

Here are the Health Apps I have installed on my iPhone 5s

So, if you have an iPhone 5s or newer with iOS 8 you can check this out for yourself by starting Health then click on Health Data at the bottom of the screen; then All and scroll down and click on Steps.  Then click ‘Show on Dashboard’ so it turns green. The steps you’ve taken since downloading iOS 8 will show in a graph. So far, it’s about the only native Health app function I’ve found as all the others come from 3rd Party apps I’ve downloaded.

iOS 8 has a great Emergency Contact page that can hold vital health data

Some of the value in the Health app isn’t all related to activities, calories and heartbeat. One very useful function is the Emergency Contact display. Here you can enter your Name, Medical Conditions, Spouse and contact phone number, Blood Type, Organ Donor, Weight and Height. In case of an accident a First Responder can access this info from the Lock Screen without having to enter a Passcode. If you don’t like this, then you can disable the First Responder access

The Apple Watch due in early 2015 will track Activities, Heartbeat, Health etc.

Apple’s planning to get into the Health field in a big way. The Apple Watch due out in early 2015 will have most, if not more, of the capabilities of existing 3rd party Health apps. Also, Apple is looking to connect to hospitals and doctors to allow you to upload health data directly to them and even better to have results of exams, blood tests and other medical procedures downloaded directly to your Health app no matter which device it may reside on. Think about the possibilities for RVers!

Jawbone UP & Fitbit have released iPhone apps with no wristband required

Shortly after Apple unleashed all the new Health apps yesterday morning,  Jawbone, the makers of the UP and UP24 activity trackers, introduced a version of its UP iPhone app that works without requiring a fitness band. Instead, the new version of Jawbone’s health and fitness iPhone app adds support for Apple’s HealthKit feature and Health app on iOS 8 making UP’s software for tracking activity and sleep as well as logging meals more valuable to iPhone users wanting to fill the new Health app with data. FitBit has also introduced an iPhone app that doesn’t need a wristband.

The Health app said I was doing so well, I could have some Apple Crisp

The bottom line here is it’s a wonderful world of technology we’re heading into. I’ve been using Health for just 2 days and have set a goal of 10,000 steps a day – that’s over 8km!!  I’ve exceeded that goal both days.  The program automatically calculates my base calorie burn based on my age, height and weight and then figures out how many activity calories I burn on top of the base measurement. Heck, I was way ahead on burn rate so I just had to sample Paulette's first Apple Crisp of this Fall.

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