Apple have not been shy about implying they think it'll be "really big" and have an impact on the actual healthcare system.

This author is pointing the myriad of actual reasons why "your personal medical data" is stunningly uninteresting to healthcare providers and not at all a simple problem to solve.

I can't believe you're getting downvoted for this. Apple is the one playing at having a "solution" to this problem, and they have been from the moment they showed Epic MyChart in the keynote.

The reality is that HealthKit is going to be a victim of Apple's inability to play nicely with others, in addition to its other technical limitations also described in the post. However, Apple has positioned it so that when it does flop, they can play off as the big bad medical industry refusing to embrace change.

Yes, and this time there is no Steve Jobs to drive a hard bargain.

EDIT: This is not snark. It's an observation. Recall last time with iTunes Steve Jobs managed to get all the music industry players on board even though the deal wasn't in their favor. I doubt Apple will be able to achieve the same in the health industry without Steve Jobs at the helm.

The only "playing nice" that needs to happen is that Apple needs to keep the HealthKit API around. If an EHR company has an iOS app, they use the HealthKit APIs and they're off to the races.

If they already have a deal with Epic MyChart, are there many others they really need to play nice with? Every hospital in my area uses Epic already.

> HealthKit provides a way for iOS devices to integrate health-related device data for use by the iOS device owner, no more, no less.

Perhaps he didn't state this so explicitly, but the subtext in his post is that that he believes HealthKit not going to have an impact on care delivery without EHR integration.

He did mention this, albeit towards the end:

> In practice, I expect HealthKit will have little or no impact on professional healthcare delivery.

There are a lot of interesting things that can be done in the world of health-tech that don't qualify as "healthcare delivery". On the other hand, most of the parts that people talk about "disrupting" do. Care delivery tends to be the most expensive (though also the highest yield, dollar-for-dollar) component of health.

I think this is Apple's play into medical devices without having to go through the expensive process of starting through the FDA or messing with these backwards EHR companies. They start consumer and then physical trainers start using iPads and iPhones because they work well for consumers devices. Work up to doctors that pressure the FDA into relaxing regulations to allow them to use Apple devices. The exact same thing happened recently in the airline industry. Apple wins consumer confidence then customized expensive medical apps follow that run on that same hardware. And Apple takes a 30% cut of those sales without having to certify any software, throws the responsibility to the app devs.

I agree. Apple did refer to major healthcare partners but my impression was that this was just to enable users to share fitness and personal monitoring data with their healthcare providers (which the healthcare provider could then add to the EHR). I saw no suggestion that Apple were aiming to attack the professional/enterprise EHR market.

I don't know if there could be a progressive expansion of capability and then an attack on the EHR market but Apple hasn't signalled that and it isn't currently intended for that.

I'm sure Apple is aware of the mess of regulations they would encounter if they advertised the Health app and HealthKit to be a hub for all of your medical data. Not only would the connections between your iDevice and a hospital potentially fall under scrutiny by a variety of health-related state and federal agencies, but the complete iOS to iCloud connection and what it sends and receives would probably start getting heavy analysis and would need to prove to bureaucracies precisely what Apple and third party vendors do and do not transmit.

There be bureaucratic dragons.

Agreed with the other commenters here, although I do appreciate the original blog post for pointing out concrete examples of backwards technology use in health care. It is a good reminder that pretty much every industry (perhaps outside of tech companies with tech customers interoperating with each other) has major dysfunction and underutilization of current technologies.

If Healthkit actually aspires to be just one more silo, you can stop right there and say it's already part of the problem.

You remember the scenario the author sketches out - a critical care patient arrives and you're handed a packet and given a verbal description. Now someone is saying some more crucial information is just lurking on the patient's iPhone? Yeah, either you waste crucial minutes finding that or that info is lost (most likely). Thanks Apple.