Apple’s healthcare service HealthKit is leading the charge to be the dominant technology used for patient screening after revelations that 14 out of 23 of the top US hospitals are signed up to it.
The service which was launched as part of the release of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus is aiming to provide a regular link between the phone’s owner and their doctor to provide a real-time picture of their overall state of health by using a combination of monitoring devices in the phone itself, along with information fed to it by various other health monitoring devices.
By being able to monitor a patient’s daily health, it is hoped that major incidents could be tracked early and could even lower the number of admissions a patient may have at a time when many hospitals struggle to have free beds for patients.
Now, according to Reuters, these 14 hospitals will be aiming to trial its use with their patients, particularly when it comes to monitoring patients with chronic conditions including diabetes and hypertension.
While seemingly establishing itself as the front-runner when it comes to health monitoring, Apple will still find itself competing with Google’s Fit service which has access to the largest market given Android’s larger market-share not just in the US, but the world.
Regardless, the next few years will prove vital to either company’s plans to dominate the health monitoring market with the research group IDC Health Insights predicting that in the US alone, 70pc of hospitals will invest in the technology by 2018.
The ace up Apple’s sleeve however could be the launch of the Apple Watch, due for release next April, which aims to provide further functionality for HealthKit and more ways of monitoring a person’s health.
Apple HealthKit image via Shutterstock
