Apple Health may be the go-to choice for personal management, but it falls short when it comes to professional health consulting. Don't get us wrong - the app's user-friendly interface, cross-platform availability, and free price tag make it a popular choice. But regarding personal needs, Apple Health is like a hammer. It's useful for general records but not as versatile and adaptable to keep up with the demands of a personal health.

Here are 6 reasons that make Apple Health great for friends and not so great for personal health↓

8 ways to make Apple Health so Great

Health data in one place

The Health app is a secure place to collect and share health data. The Health app was Apple’s first health and fitness feature, creating a central and secure location for all of a user’s personal health information on iPhone. With the introduction of Apple Watch, the quantity and quality of health insights available to our users in the Health app significantly increased. Today the Health app is also available on iPad, and users can store over 150 different types of health data from Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad and third-party apps and devices in the Health app, in addition to available health records data from connected institutions in the US, UK, and Canada. Data from the many health and fitness features described in this report is available in one central view in the Health app, and features like Trends allow users to identify important changes over time. With Health Sharing, users can also choose to share certain types of this health data with a trusted partner or caregiver.

Apple Watch acts as an intelligent guardian for users’ health

Apple Watch is equipped with features to notify users of possible underlying health conditions, giving them the agency to act on this information. Because Apple Watch is always on the wrist, features like Fall Detection, Crash Detection, and Emergency SOS can also help users call for help in the moment they need it. Below is more information on our features focused on heart health, mobility, hearing, and safety, which enable Apple Watch to act as an intelligent guardian for users’ health.

Features to improve everyday health and fitness

In many ways, health is the compilation of small lifestyle choices people make every day. When people develop positive habits they repeat consistently, their overall health can significantly improve. With the features built into Apple Watch, iPhone and iPad, our users are able to see a more complete picture of their health and are empowered with actionable insights to help them reach their personal health and fitness goals. Articles and descriptions in the Health app provide users with accessible explanations surrounding important health topics.

Fueling innovative third-party health and fitness apps

Apple makes available a number of tools and core technologies to all developers to help them create innovative apps, including more than 250,000 software development building blocks called APIs. With the HealthKit API, Apple makes it possible for third-party developers to develop health and fitness apps that take advantage of the sophisticated sensors on iPhone and Apple Watch and are compatible with the Health app. HealthKit provides a framework for developers of health and fitness apps to integrate users’ health data, with permission, into their apps’ features, and for apps to contribute data to the Health app (which users can then see in one place and with permission, other apps can use for their own features). Importantly, we developed HealthKit to provide users access to and granular control of their health data, and we designed HealthKit with privacy and security at its core. Many HealthKit-enabled apps are popular with users worldwide, providing a host of health and fitness experiences to users. They include running apps like Nike Run Club, fitness apps like MyFitnessPal, sleep apps like Rise: Energy & Sleep Tracker, SnoreLab, and Pillow, meditation and mindfulness apps like Calm, Headspace, and Ten Percent Happier, hearing-related apps like SonicCloud, nutrition apps like WeightWatchers or Lose It!, and medications and symptoms tracking apps like Pt Pal Pro and Medisafe Medication Management. In addition, an increasing number of HealthKit-enabled apps use connected accessories to allow our users to track and monitor even more aspects of their health, including blood pressure (e.g., Qardio heart health), weight (e.g., Withings Health Mate), blood glucose level (e.g., Dexcom, One Drop), and respiratory health metrics (e.g., MIR Smart One). With iPadOS 17, health and fitness developers can now also use HealthKit on iPad, opening up new opportunities to create innovative health and fitness experiences.

Partnering with the medical community to move research and care forward

Equipping researchers to make new scientific discoveries

Apple’s work to advance health is grounded in the belief that all innovation in health should be grounded in science. Today, Apple’s advanced features and technologies are empowering researchers around the world to collect data more frequently and at a broader scale than ever before, so they can continue to move science forward. With iPhone and Apple Watch, study participants are collecting their health data every day, throughout the day, and participants can then choose to contribute data to research anywhere and anytime, lowering the barriers to study entry and participation. As a result, researchers can obtain high-quality, varied, and frequent data at greater scale. The ubiquity of iPhone and Apple Watch gives researchers the opportunity to recruit participants from a large-scale user base, thereby alleviating one of the biggest challenges medical researchers face: recruiting participants. Millions of users have Apple Watch on their wrists and millions more use iPhone every day. We also believe in offering all iPhone and Apple Watch users an opportunity to contribute to science through the Research app, while providing them with transparency and control over their data. Users can easily see how their data will be used in research studies and have the ability to toggle on and off their participation in these studies as they see fit. With these contributions, and leveraging our sensor technology, researchers can study large and varied groups, obtain frequent data, and, ultimately, analyze data from a broader representation of the population. ResearchKit and the Research app are designed to help researchers advance toward potentially groundbreaking advancements, using our products in areas where they can have the greatest impact.

Other studies Apple has supported

In addition to the studies in the Research app, Apple has supported a number of other research efforts focused on heart health, mental health, and more. See below for several examples.

Heart Failure Study (University Health Network, Canada) This study, in collaboration with Dr. Heather Ross at the University of Toronto in Canada, is exploring how data collected using Apple Watch can provide early indicators of worsening heart failure. While ongoing, the goal of the study is to understand how remote monitoring through Apple Watch could drive better clinical outcomes for heart failure patients.

Digital Mental Health Study (UCLA, US) Using devices including iPhone and Apple Watch, UCLA experts in behavioral health are collaborating with Apple to obtain objective measures of factors such as sleep, physical activity, heart rate and daily routines to illuminate the relationship between these factors and symptoms of depression and anxiety. Making the connection between quantifiable data and symptoms of anxiety and depression could enable health care providers to note warning signs, prevent the onset of depressive episodes and track the effectiveness of treatment. In addition, these objective measures will help medical science to better understand depression and anxiety, leading to more effective treatments in the future.

Strengthening the physician-patient relationship with meaningful data

Most physician-patient relationships are built through interactions that occur in a clinical setting — at the doctor’s office or at the hospital. On average, individuals see their doctors at most a few times per year, and during visits, physicians have limited insight into patients’ everyday activities, which can be highly relevant to their overall health and care. Historically, most of the data needed to effectively assess behaviors and risks outside of the clinical setting has been difficult to obtain and interpret. Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad and third-party apps are allowing patients to give their doctors a more complete picture of their health. Our advances in tracking, storing, analyzing, and visualizing health data on Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad allow patients to gain insights into their health in between doctors’ visits and to be alerted when there is something they should discuss with their doctor, leading to more informed and meaningful conversations between patients and their healthcare providers. Stronger physician-patient relationships are linked with improved patient health outcomes.63 When healthcare providers have more insight into how patients are doing outside of their office, it helps them understand the unique challenges their patients face in everyday life. Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad data allow patients to engage in conversations with doctors with access to data in the Health app that can provide a better picture of how they are doing on a daily basis — not just on the day of their visit.

In addition to having conversations in person around data from the Health app, patients can also easily export a PDF of their ECG app results on Apple Watch to share with their doctor.x And at participating institutions in the US, patients can use the Health Sharing feature in the Health app to share categories of Health app data with their physician. When patients choose to share this data, their healthcare team can view the shared data in a web-based view in their own EHR system and review trends and changes over time. This feature builds on Health Records, which creates a direct, encrypted connection between participating health institutions and a patient’s iPhone or iPad so patients can see a central view of their allergies, conditions, immunizations, lab results, medications, procedures, vitals, and clinical notes directly within the Health app. Apps and devices developed by third parties, built using developer tools such as HealthKit and CareKit, have provided additional ways to strengthen patient-physician relationships through at-home monitoring programs. This data can be shared with physicians and caregivers who can easily and securely remotely monitor different aspects of their patients’ health and share personalized care plans that include instructions and reminders, which can be adjusted as the patient’s condition evolves.xi As discussed in the section below, at-home monitoring programs based on Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad have shown promising results.

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