HealthKit

Apple has had its HealthKit service for a while now and back during WWDC 2014 Apple talked about how it would involve major health providers in the use of HealthKit. So far, the service has not been particularly embraced by the healthcare providers around the world and has mostly been used for collecting data from devices like wearables and pucks placed in shoes. That may be about to change as Apple is building improved health record software better able to analyze and understand patient data.

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A pair of trademarked healthcare-related images have appeared in the USPTO registered by Google this week. Both of these images suggest that the long-abandoned Google Health may make a resurgence, coming back now thanks (at least in part) due to Apple's efforts with HealthKit and CareKit. Now that Apple has all but convinced the tech-savvy of the positivity of monitoring their own health with their mobile devices, Google can join in (or return to, rather), this smarter, healthier future.

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IBM has announced a new app for iPhone and Apple Watch that aims to gather data on the relationship between sleep habits and overall health. Dubbed SleepHealth, the app does far more than reveal when users are waking up in the night like typical sleep trackers. The app is built on IBM's Watson Health Cloud, a platform that was developed in partnership with Apple and Johnson & Johnson, and connects with ResearchKit, the open-source framework from Apple.

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Misfit is revamping its fitness tracker, with an online dashboard and added smart home integration, while Apple HealthKit support gets a boost. My Misfit is a new browser-based hub for reviewing health data from the Misfit Shine and Flash wearables along with the Beddit sleep-tracker; it'll have a count of steps, calories, and distance travelled, along with overviews of weekly and monthly trends.

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Apple is taking reproductive health seriously in iOS 9, with a new set of comprehensive HealthKit measures that could be essential for those trying to conceive or those trying not to. With software tracking things like menstrual cycles and intended to predict fertility some of the most popular in the App Store, it’s perhaps no surprise that Apple Health should expand to embrace it. Rather than just a few basic metrics, however, HealthKit is aiming for a real insight.

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iPhones can track a myriad of data from your everyday life. From your footsteps to your heart rate, we relay a lot of data without ever having to opt-in. Apple is looking to gather a new type of information from its users--DNA. Apple is planning to release apps, using its new ResearchKit developer tools, to help hospitals and research teams conduct clinical trials and other medical research from their iPhones, and genetic testing is just another piece of that puzzle.

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With Apple Watch's release on the horizon, functionality details are pouring in. We'll break down how Apple Watch's heart rate sensor actually works, and go into some ways to ensure that you always get a valid heart rate reading from the device, straight from the latest Apple support document. Constantly tracking heart rate is the key to correctly tracking how many calories are burned throughout the day. The watch will not only continuously monitor your heart rate, but will offer a "Heart Rate Glance" feature where you can go back and look how your heart rate measured up at any point that day.

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There's a lot to be said about how the new Apple Watch does much more than just tell the time; it has several full-fledged health and activity tracking features, not to mention being able to run its own apps. One of these forthcoming apps tells an alternate form of the time, such as how much longer you have to live. It's called Life Clock, and it's much more than a joke or novelty that just counts down seconds arbitrarily, it actually estimates and updates the time based on your health data.

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Do you want to play Centipede? Of course you want to play Centipede; everyone wants to play Centipede. You could download the Atari Greatest Hits app, but that offers in-app purchases for games. If you don’t want to spend a few bucks, but do want to play Centipede (remember, everyone wants that), Atari will let you earn your games the old fashioned way. With Atari Fit, you get a pretty standard fitness app, but the more you work out, the more games you get!

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With Apple Watch looming on the horizon, it seems Apple is clearing room from retail stores to make room for their own wearable. In your local Apple Store, you will no longer find most Jawbone products or the Nike Fuelband. Though both are fitness bands that don’t necessarily compete directly with Apple Watch, they’ve nonetheless been removed from circulation via Apple. Neither device can be found via Apple’s online store, either. Other wearables are still available, at least online, but if you were planning to pick up a Jawbone UP24 with your new iPhone, think again.

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At the Apple Watch event this week, the company revealed information on their next big medical and health pus: ResearchKit. After talking up HBO NOW on Apple TV and a bit about CarPlay, Apple's event turned toward Medical Research. Apple's Senior Vice President of Operations Jeff Williams stepped onstage to introduce ResearchKit. This system, said Williams, "turns iPhone and HealthKit into powerful tools for medical research." This system would have "hundreds of millions of iPhone owners out there" contributing health data - since they'd "gladly contribute," so says Williams.

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A significant update was released yesterday for the Nike+ Fuel app for iOS. Most notably, the app now features HealthKit integration, meaning data from Nike's FuelBand wearable can be shared with the iPhone's new Health app. But also important is that a FuelBand is no longer required at all, as users can instead rely on the health and movement tracking sensors built-in to the iPhone 6 and 5S. Since the app itself remains free, there's now no purchase required to use Nike's movement tracker.

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