With some 30 applications already integrated with Apple’s HealthKit platform, it should come as no surprise that many are big name brands - and some hold the potential to dramatically enhance the way doctors interact with patients.
Even a simple calorie counter and diet tracker, for instance, or a personal trainer app can arm physicians with information that they, in turn, could use to educate patients and, ideally at least, motivate people to change or modify behavior.
Apple’s long-term business model for HealthKit, in fact, is to integrate health data from various applications and sources in such a way that patients can share it with their doctors. That begins with iOS 8, which brings a dashboard enabling users to determine which information they want to share and what they would prefer to keep private.
Whether Apple and its competitors, including Google, Microsoft, Samsung and others, effectively give birth to a new breed of engaged app-happy consumers and physicians who harness that patient-generated data to use metrics that motivate patients to take more responsibility for their own healthcare and wellness remains to be seen.
mHealth News sister site Medical Practice Insider, in the meantime, has compiled a list of the most popular health and fitness apps already integrated with HealthKit - and we expect many more to follow, and some even to knock the current leaders out of their top spots.
Slideshow: Top 5 top HealthKit-compatible apps
