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HealthKit in depth from the perspective of a swimming app

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Re: HealthKit in depth from the perspective of a swimming app

#11

Post by k-mcgrady »

danielbarla wrote: post #10
k-mcgrady wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data may be wrong but couldn't the trends be useful? For example a heart rate monitor consistently off by -20bpm will still provide an accurate trend on heart rate over a period of time. I guess the problem here is that the data, even if wrong, would have to be consistently wrong by the same amount.

Your example is overly optimistic - if it was consistent like that, you'd just adjust it at the factory or calibrate it later on, and you'd have a perfect instrument. In reality, the data is all over the place, with a large spread. You might still be able to get some kind of weak trend out of it, if you knew the tendencies of that particular equipment. I doubt you could even take long-term averages and rely on them.…

I wonder why these instruments are so hard to get right. I'll be interested to see how well the sensors on the Apple Watch work considering it's essentially the official companion to the Health app. I'd assume that monitoring heart rate form the wrist should be quite accurate but it probably depends on how tight someone has the watch on and the exact position it is on their arm.

Re: HealthKit in depth from the perspective of a swimming app

#12

Post by earltedly »

Someone wrote: post #2

"Apple are making quite a big deal about this. The recorded data is of an incredibly private and personal nature and they’re preventing it from being passed over any kind of network except as part of a secure backup. [...] A more real world case is that hospitals are starting to create out patient monitoring apps. Whenever a patient uses their blood pressure monitor, the hospital app gets notified of the new reading,…

Thanks for that - you've caught me being a bit ambiguous. I've corrected it now.

What I was intending to say is that your HealthKit store itself is never transmitted as a whole /except/ as part of an iCloud backup. Apps can of course move individual data points around with the users permission so long as they say so in their privacy agreements.

'The recorded data is of an incredibly private and personal nature and they’re preventing HealthKit stores from being passed over any kind of network except as part of a secure iCloud backup'

Re: HealthKit in depth from the perspective of a swimming app

#13

Post by earltedly »

jader201 wrote: post #6

> A more real world case is that hospitals are starting to create out patient monitoring apps. Whenever a patient uses their blood pressure monitor, the hospital app gets notified of the new reading, sends that data to the hospital computers, a doctor might then review it, see there’s a problem and call the patient in. I don't see how doctors could rely on this data. There are so many devices that may use HealthKit,…

I'd imagine that to begin with medical professionals will only allow this on approved devices (the originating device is stored with the sample). Given that certified devices have to work within defined tolerances, they'd then be able to know roughly how good the data they're dealing with. I guess there's always going to be cases of user error in equipment use, but that's part of what has to be considered when designing such a system.

Re: HealthKit in depth from the perspective of a swimming app

#14

Post by smackfu »

scoot wrote: post #3

What this article fails to mention is that Healthkit is still utterly broken. I linked up a couple of health apps to it, and after MyFitnessPal's first attempt at integration spewed a ton of duplicate data across almost every nutrition category, I had to clean up their mess, and disable most categories. Even their second attempt is broken. Meanwhile, Healthkit keeps forgetting what I've added to the dashboard, and sh…

Yeah, now there is the potential for one buggy app creating bad data to "infect" all your other apps via HealthKit. Like if it doubles up your runs, now your activity calories are wrong in your diet tracker. Yay.

Re: HealthKit in depth from the perspective of a swimming app

#15

Post by earltedly »

smackfu wrote: post #14
scoot wrote: post #3

What this article fails to mention is that Healthkit is still utterly broken. I linked up a couple of health apps to it, and after MyFitnessPal's first attempt at integration spewed a ton of duplicate data across almost every nutrition category, I had to clean up their mess, and disable most categories. Even their second attempt is broken. Meanwhile, Healthkit keeps forgetting what I've added to the dashboard, and sh…

Yeah, now there is the potential for one buggy app creating bad data to "infect" all your other apps via HealthKit. Like if it doubles up your runs, now your activity calories are wrong in your diet tracker. Yay.

One of the protections there is that if you delete an app from your phone, you've got the option to also delete all of it's data from HealthKit. Still agree it's a pain though when it does happen.

Re: HealthKit in depth from the perspective of a swimming app

#16

Post by trailrunner »

smackfu wrote: post #14
scoot wrote: post #3

What this article fails to mention is that Healthkit is still utterly broken. I linked up a couple of health apps to it, and after MyFitnessPal's first attempt at integration spewed a ton of duplicate data across almost every nutrition category, I had to clean up their mess, and disable most categories. Even their second attempt is broken. Meanwhile, Healthkit keeps forgetting what I've added to the dashboard, and sh…

Yeah, now there is the potential for one buggy app creating bad data to "infect" all your other apps via HealthKit. Like if it doubles up your runs, now your activity calories are wrong in your diet tracker. Yay.

but HK was supposed to fuse data so I would suppose it would remove double entries. I think they should wait a few months before releasing it.

Re: HealthKit in depth from the perspective of a swimming app

#17

Post by Poiesis »

I have to agree with the "broken" comments. I can't speak to the API, but the Health app sure is a head-scratcher. Those sub-minute steps intervals mentioned by someone else are just baffling from a normal user's perspective. And as far as I can tell, there's no way to answer "How many steps did I walk on Monday?" without breaking out a calculator and adding them up yourself.
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