Los Angeles Hospital Turns On Access to HealthKit for More Than 80,000 Patients

Apple has seen its biggest integration of its HealthKit platform to date, as the Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has updated its online medical records system during the weekend, enabling access to HealthKit for more than 80,000 patients, reports Bloomberg.

Healthkit

So, as of this Monday, patients are allowed to integrate personal medical information with their patient files, such as weight, blood pressure, steps taken, glucose level, and oxygen saturation levels, and grant online access to their doctors.

“This is just another set of data that we’re confident our physicians will take into account as they make clinical and medical judgments,” Dworkin said. “We don’t really, fully know and understand how patients will want to use this and we’re going to basically stand ready to learn by what will happen.”

Starting this week, all Cedars-Sinai Medical Center patients have this feature enabled. The only way of opting out is not to use it, Darren Dworkin, chief information officer at Cedars-Sinai told Bloomberg.

HealthKit was introduced last year alongside the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus as part of Apple’s foray into the $3 trillion healthcare market. Since then, more than 900 health, medical, and fitness apps have been integrated with HealthKit.

The platform acts like a hub, as it reads and records the data from various devices. Back in February, Apple CEO Tim Cook emphasized the potential of the platform: Users can share the data with a physician, or just use it to find out important information about their health as they start monitoring it.

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