The Mayo Clinic, a contributor in the development of iOS 8's HealthKit, has retooled and rebranded its flagship app to leverage Apple's health platform.
Thanks to its HealthKit integration, the new Mayo Clinic app now allows users to view lab results in real time. Users communicate with health care providers through the app's secured messenger and can manage details of their appointments.
"Users of the new Mayo Clinic app will have easier access to health information, guidance, and care when they need it most," says John Wald, Mayo's medical director of public affairs. "Through the Apple Health app, users will be able to integrate information from other apps with their Mayo Clinic health information, creating actionable data to improve health and wellness."
The reworked Mayo Clinic app enables users to view education videos from the nonprofit health organization and they can review their Mayo Clinic health data through Apple's Health app. While the Mayo Clinic's Patient and Pregnancy apps are available on all major mobile platforms, Wald says the health organization's work with Apple has enabled the pair to pull users up close to personal health data.
"We view the Mayo Clinic/Apple relationship as a collaboration to bring health information and solutions closer to individuals," Wald says.
Apple released its HealthKit platform for iOS 8, eventually, in an effort to compile health data collected from internal and external smartphone sensors into a single, secure location that health care professionals and users alike can access.
"[Up] until now the information gathered by those applications lives in silos," said Federighi. "You can't get a single comprehensive picture of your health situation. But now you can, with HealthKit. HealthKit provides a single place that applications can contribute to a composite profile of your activity and health."
While the HealthKit showed a lot of promise when it was revealed at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the health platform stumbled out of the gate.
It took two attempts at iOS 8 patches and a rework of the health platform before HealthKit was finally rolled out. Now the ball is with developers to help HealthKit realize its full potential.
"These developers are sort of make or break for Apple," said Forrester analyst Frank Gillett when HealthKit was first revealed. "You have a growing variety of systems where you need developers and content creators to make great stuff for Apple."
