“Apple’s HealthKit will let developers use your iPhone as a digital health hub,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “I’ve curated a few existing products and solutions to show how these will work with you across a typical day.”
“First thing in the morning, you hit the digital scales and begin your 7-minute work out,” Evans writes. “Brush your teeth and perhaps check your blood pressure. Stop briefly for a bite to eat and a hot drink (entering the details in your calorie counter) and you’re on your way. HealthKit now has a good snapshot of your physical condition as you start your day: weight, calorie intake, blood pressure and dental hygiene.”
“Using your step counter app you walk (or run) to your next destination,” Evans writes. “If you’re in your car, you’ll use your device to open the door and launch the in-car entertainment system. If you suffer from any medical conditions, you may even run an app to warn you about blood sugar, pollen count or heart rate, to help prevent accidents…”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
I see no mention of coffee and cigarettes in that regimen.
or soda, fast food, no food… Is this just for people that are already healthy?
man, all these health nuts are gonna get old and die of nothing.
No, it says hot drink. Could be either tea of coffee
I prefer a “Harry Truman” breakfast myself. An egg, white toast, bacon and a shot of Old Grand Dad (Bourbon). Imagine if the president today had a shot of Bourbon with breakfast everyday!
I think the vast majority of people can make a DRAMATIC improvement in their health with changes they already know, and micro-measuring those changes isn’t going to help. I.e.
– stop eating crap
– eat real food
– get some exercise
That’ll be $2,000 bucks for my revolutionary new health program, please.
John; right on!
10% have diabetes (& going up) and excersize is almost non-existant on average today, maybe 5 minutes a day walking, as I vaguely remember.
You’re wrong. Feedback makes a huge difference in people’s habits.
Must be nice to be so certain about what will or will not happen in the future.
I don’t think having a bunch of high tech apps will make any difference to most people. Surely at this point, everybody and their dog knows that drinking a gallon of coke per day, eating a sackful of cheesies and never exercising is a bad idea. VAST improvements in health could be made by those three simple steps. And it doesn’t take any fancy feedback mechanisms to do that.
If people really need toothbrushing tracking, we’re doomed!
By the way, my sarcasm of “Must be nice to be so certain” was aimed simply at your “You’re wrong”. Greater use of “I think”, “maybe” and “in my opinion” would benefit several people on this site.
Dental hygiene (or lack thereof) is linked to dietary problems and worst of all heart attacks so not exactly trivial.
Yes. But an app to track your tooth brushing!!! Are people really so pathetic they need an app to tell them whether they are brushing their teeth enough?
Wow. I can’t believe people are voting you down. It is absolutely true – plaque is plaque, whether on your gums or clogging your arteries. Indeed, not trivial.
Using these apps all the time will also lead to more running. To an outlet so you can plug into your charger.
I’m having a hard time seeing the need for a dental hygiene app or internet-enabled toothbrush. Did I brush my teeth this morning? Um, YEAH, just like I have for the past 40-something years. Did I do a good job? Still have my teeth. Yeesh.
I have a standing order for someone to kill me if I ever order an Internet-enabled fridge.
And the first time I get an unsolicited pop-up on my phone that says “hey, we noticed you were in the store and wanted to…” is the day I go postal.
BANG!!! In case no one is around when the time comes. 😈
600,000 Americans die each year from heart disease and cost the economy $108.9 billion. This is outrageous. Telling people to stop eating crap and to exercise more is obviously not working. HealthKit paired with an iWatch and other devices will help motivate many.
Let’s say the iWatch does measure blood sugar levels, protein, etc. How will this help the average Joe? Our hero Joe is 5’10” and weighs 230 lbs and is told by his doctor to lose weight “or else”. He loves pasta and marinara sauce and eats this meal every two days. Every time he eats pasta his iWatch or similar device tells him that his blood sugar level is elevated for 10 hours. He weighs himself daily and never loses weight.
Joe gets the bright idea that foods which elevate blood sugar levels for hours won’t help him lose weight, but he doesn’t exactly know which foods to eat. A friend at work recommends he installs a diet app like Atkins or Weight Watchers. These apps provide food recommendations and help monitor his physiology by accessing the HealthKit data.
Joe begins to lose weight and notices his vital signs drastically improve. He also notices he can still eat pasta with marinara sauce once a week without gaining weight. Joe is happy.
There will be detractors who will poo-poo this whole concept and others who will crush the iWatch into a thousand pieces because it will say things like, “Danger, Will Robinson! Don’t eat that entire fucking chocolate cake!”, but for many, this technology will be a godsend.
A big part of that problem is that what they have been telling us to eat was wrong. “Avoid fats and eat lots of grains” is a good head start towards diabetes. And then without the fats people get hungry more quickly, but they think they shouldn’t eat fats so they grab something sugary. And the cycle continues.
“Telling people to stop eating crap and to exercise more is obviously not working.”
Absolutely.
“HealthKit paired with an iWatch and other devices will help motivate many.”
I doubt it. Manhattan dwellers with their personal trainers, people going to exercise class five time a week, and others similar don’t NEED this. They may REFINE what they are doing, but they’re doing well, anyway.
Those that need it are the vast numbers of living blimps that inhabit this continent. I think very few of them will change their overall behavior because they can have apps on their iPhone.
There are a few areas of the planet where people live extraordinarily long and very healthy lives. They don’t need any fancy apps, or books, or videos, or nutritional consultants to do it.
My main worry is just that, worrying all the time what such a device will tell me. Now theres something that will raise your blood pressure.
Ping 2.0 ?
Something that the majority of iPhone users are not interested in, or willing to participate in, for a number of different reasons.
For the high flying, high profile minority, the people with plenty of spare time and money this will give them something to obsess about, prior to or after bringing up the kids.
These days on a global scale, iPhone has been widely adopted by a majority of users who are not the slightest bit interested in what is described in this article, the novelty of keying calories soon wears off. Let’s hope Apple and third party developers have a few more tricks up their collective sleeves or HealthKit will be loved by a few and ignored by the masses (Ping)
Ping required widespread participation, but HealthKit is personal. It doesn’t matter if most people don’t use it. The ones who do will benefit. There’s already a viable market for health-related wearables, and this will make them all the more useful.
In the future … When your iWatch determines through overwhelming data trends across multiple lifestyle conduct measurements… that you have no redeemable value to the improvement of society, it gives instructions to your iPhone Maps to direct you to the nearest Soylent Green facility in order to help you increase that value.
Maps has never guided anyone to the wrong destination… It has merely been beta testing candidates and future factory locations.
First thing in the morning, you hit the digital scales and begin your 7-minute work out
Yeah, right. You pretty much lost me right there. I actually belong to a gym and workout fairly regularly. But no device is going to make me do it right after I get out of bed. (Unless that device is a cattle prod.)
——RM