Apple will use HealthKit information for diagnosis

Anonymous sources have told Bloomberg that Apple plans to use data from the HealthKit app to provide health advice. The system should also be able to make simple diagnoses.

HealthKit currently mainly collects data about the physical condition of the user via the various mobile devices that the company produces, such as the second version of the Apple Watch, which already contains a GPS chip, a heart rate sensor and a motion sensor. However, the goal extends further, Bloomberg writes citing its sources. In recent years, Apple has hired more and more health experts to improve the underlying software in order to ultimately be able to make diagnoses.

In addition, Apple is working on new apps for the Apple Watch that should make it possible to track sleep patterns and an app that measures the time that elapses between the calming of a heart that is exerting and the state of rest; a healthy heart will usually beat at a normal rate fairly quickly. In this case, the application must also interpret and not only display the data about the beating of the heart.

Earlier this year, Apple bought Gliimpse, a company that can collect electronic health records from different databases and in different formats.

Apple has been in the research area for some time with, among other things, ResearchKit, an app that can be used to conduct clinical trials, among other things, with which Apple is able to make itself one step more indispensable in the medical world.

It is not clear when such functionality will end up in the HealthKit app, so that simple diagnoses can actually be made. Doctors have expressed concerns about HealthKit in the past because diagnoses may be misdiagnosed or over-generalized. It can also cause obsessions with ‘the perfect’ numbers. There are also concerns about the security of health data.