Apple Watch To Feature HealthKit
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Touted as Apple’s most personal device ever, Apple Watch will come enabled with HealthKit.
After much anticipation, Apple has unveiled the new Apple Watch – it’s billed as their most personal device ever – featuring new technologies and a pioneering user interface. According to the release, Apple Watch “allows you to send a sketch, a gentle tap, an audio message through Walkie Talkie or even your own heartbeat.”
Apple Watch also introduces comprehensive health and fitness apps that can help people lead healthier lives. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, referred to it as a comprehensive health and fitness device, noting it can pick up pulse rate to measure intensity of workout with sensors to measure distance covered and type of exercise. The watch, Cook said, is capable of motivating its wearers to be more active and, as a result, healthier.
That ability to track data will pair with its Apple’s HealthKit app, which will debut with the new iOS operating system. The app can aggregate health data from various wearable devices, as well as store and send that data to providers or other entities as the consumer desires.
Tracking data is already something many Americans do through lower-tech means. A January 2013 report from Pew Research found 69 percent of U.S. adults track one or more health indicators. Of those trackers, 49 percent say they store the data “in their heads” and 34 percent use paper.
The HealthKit could be promising as a new foundation for health app developers. Because the app will aggregate data from various wearables and render it into a common format, developers will be able to concentrate on functions for apps without having to design or coordinate with the interfaces or even the notion of different data standards for dealing with these devices. That means that healthcare systems will become more aggressive in creating their own apps.
Apple Watch also includes a new Activity app designed to help motivate you to be more active throughout the day, and an all-new Workout app designed to provide the metrics you need during dedicated workout sessions.
Apple Watch will be available in early 2015 starting at $349 (US). Apple Watch is compatible with iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus running the latest version of iOS 8, and requires an iPhone for use.