The new HealthKit app by Apple was developed to allow users to monitor their body's status, collecting and analyzing data to help users improve their health.
However, a new app named Deadline is using the HealthKit app not for prolonging life, but for predicting when it will end.
The morbid app, which is available for download on iTunes for $0.99, uses several kinds of data obtained by HealthKit to show a prediction on how long the user's life will last, down to the very second.
The information being extracted by Deadline from HealthKit to make its prediction includes the user's gender, date of birth, blood pressure, height, sleeping patterns and steps taken daily.
"Deadline uses statistical information to attempt to determine your date of expiration, but no app can really accurately determine when you will die, so consider this a way to motivate yourself to be healthier, and consult a physician as necessary," reads the app's developer Gist, on Deadline's iTunes page.
The point then of Deadline is to remind its users that the number of years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds a person has in life is limited. Upon seeing the time trickle down in Deadline's timer until a user's apparent death, the app is looking to motivate users to adopt a healthier lifestyle in an effort to prolong life.
The Deadline counter, while coming with a grim overtone, seeks to have its users value life even more. The new notification system included in the iOS 8.1 update will also keep the counter on the iPhone's home screen; so that users will not forget how much time they apparently have left.
HealthKit, which was initially planned to be released along with the launch of iOS 8, was only released in the iOS 8.0.2 update.
HealthKit is not yet expected to be used at full capacity early on in its release, though the app's potential to help the healthcare industry is immense.
"What the iPod did for the music industry, HealthKit is starting to do for the health-care industry, affecting the business model and business strategy of health and wellness apps, hospitals, doctors, lab test results companies, and health insurance companies," said MedWhat CEO, Arturo Devesa.
