Another
behemoth
fails?

December 6, 2019 -- This review is two years late but still relevant. Announced 12/24/2018, the the Apple Health app (that comes free with your iPhone) was given an "...updated Health Records section [to bring] together hospitals, clinics and the existing Health app to make it easy for consumers to see their available medical data from multiple providers..."

The concept is good -- Apple attempts what Google Health attempted (and failed) -- to popularize a user-controlled repository for locally- and provider-generated health data.

Access to the platform (iPhone) gives them a big advantage. They can collect things like sleep data from other apps, number of steps walked from the accelerometer, and so on. Google Health couldn't do that.

The provider-generated part is a good idea but doesn't yet work well. I was able to connect to Labcorp and to Kaiser (where scraps of my medical data reside) because evidently both of them have invested the IT resources (not much but not zero) to build the FHIR interface. The list of providers that have done this is long but I surmise it's still a small minority of the providers in the US. Google Health had the same problem -- convincing third parties to make the investment. Many didn't.

Perhaps it will take legislation -- the interoperability parts of ACA and HITECH, perhaps? -- to make this happen. Alas, my primary care provider, One Medical, has not done the programming so their data about me remains inaccessible. I have asked them to remedy this... Stay tuned.

Does this demand fall within the mandate of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) which is responsible for advancing connectivity and interoperability of health information technology (health IT)?

Section N (p.43) of Connecting Health and Care for the Nation, A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap calls for "Individuals [to] Have Access to Longitudinal Electronic Health Information, Can Contribute to that Information, and Can Direct It to Any Electronic Location". Might such locations include apps such as Apple Health?

I think Apple is on the right track with this, in the sense that it does something that I (but not most others) find useful and interesting, and it will fail for the same reason Google Health did. That is, there is no compelling reason for most health care consumers to take the time that I took to enter demographics and to connect to third parties. (Instructions) It's only engaged, technophillic patients like me who will do this. In other words, not a market big enough for Apple.

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