As rumored, the hotly anticipated HealthKit technology wasn't part of Apple's release this week of its newest operating system. Nonetheless, Epic has begun to offer details about what the platform will look like when the kinks are finally ironed out.
A coding snafu discovered in Apple's new wellness platform has developers in Cupertino, Calif., rushing to fix it, but it could be some time before that much-discussed piece of iOS 8 is ready for prime time.
"We discovered a bug that prevents us from making HealthKit apps available on iOS 8," Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller said in a press release. "We're working quickly to have the bug fixed in a software update and have HealthKit apps available by the end of the month."
For an app meant, among other things, to help maximize the salutary effects of jogging, that's an unwelcome stumble.
Fitness developers including Jawbone and Nike are tailoring their technologies to connect with the HealthKit platform, enabling consumers to feed data quantifying exercise, diet and sleep patterns directly into the Health app for easy aggregation.
But there's more planned for the platform - something many have suspected these past few months, as word spread of Apple's discussions with major healthcare players such as the Mayo Clinic and Epic.
Epic usually keeps its cards close to the vest, but company President Carl Dvorak recently offered some details about just how HealthKit might transcend its role as a mere consumer device data repository, confirming that Epic's personal health record will have a big role to play.
"Apple's HealthKit has tremendous potential to help close the gap between consumer collected data and data collected in traditional healthcare settings," he wrote in an e-mail to VentureBeat. "The Epic customer community, which provides care to over 170 million patients a year, will be able to use HealthKit through Epic's MyChart application – the most used patient portal in the U.S."
Epic spokesman Brian Spranger offered still more detail, describing to VentureBeat's Mark Sullivan how a device such as the Withings Wi-Fi-enabled scale could "notify HealthKit that it has a new weight and ask HealthKit to store that weight in the database on the iPhone."
"If the patient has given permission for the MyChart app on their phone to know about that data, HealthKit 'wakes up' the MyChart app and tells it there's new data," Spranger said. "The MyChart app on the phone then transmits that weight back to the EpicCare EHR system where it can be used appropriately as part of the patient's medical care."
(Editor's note: This story has been edited from a version that first appeared in Healthcare IT News, a sister publication in the HIMSS Media Group.)
