Apple is in negotiations with several prominent healthcare provider organizations as well as Chicago-based electronic health record (EHR) vendor, Allscripts, to incorporate its "HealthKit" service in some capacity.
The provider organizations, cited in a Reuters report, include Mount Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins. Those three and Allscripts join the Verona, Wisc.-based Epic Systems, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic, and Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente as healthcare organizations and companies that reportedly will work with Apple to integrate HealthKit into their own data systems.
Announced in June at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC), HealthKit can gather and integrate health data from a number of apps and put it all into one interface. The data can include vitals, such as blood pressure and weight. This interface allows these different apps to communicate with each other, the company says. The phone will be included in an iPhone 6 in September.
No details have been officially outlined on how HealthKit will be used by the provider organizations. Reportedly, Mayo is using the service to give patients whose results from apps and devices are abnormal follow-up information and treatment recommendations. Other health systems that use Epic, Reuters reports, will be able to integrate HealthKit data into the Epic personal health record.
The only provider organization to confirm the Apple association was Cleveland Clinic. An associate CIO, William Morris told Reuters that the organization is experimenting with HealthKit beta.
