In previous years, Apple’s keynote at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference has been the platform for the introduction of consumer-facing products and features, including the iPhone 4 in 2010 and iOS 7 in 2013. But this year’s conference was different—the final third of Apple’s presentation addressed almost zero consumer features. Instead, Cook and his team fulfilled thousands of developers’ wish lists to the sound of thunderous applause. While non-developers might have been itching for a glimpse of this fall’s anticipated new iPhones, little did they know that these additions to iOS will have a greater impact on their everyday lives than any flashy new hardware or buzz-worthy new feature.

If the redesign in iOS 7 was a fresh paint job, iOS 8 will be an entirely new engine. This is iOS 8 in context.

HealthKit

Health and fitness applications are nothing new, and have been among the most popular App Store mainstays since the platform’s inception. A whole pocket industry of fitness-tracking wearables has sprouted up around the iOS and Android ecosystems, allowing smartphone users to analyze and improve their diet, exercise habits, and sleep patterns. But until recently, getting an understanding of one’s overall health required downloading a handful of apps targeting individual health metrics, and usually the purchase of often-expensive wearable devices to record and track user activity over time.

Since Apple introduced the M7 motion coprocessor in the iPhone 5s, some of those expenses have been abated. Fitness and exercise apps have gained new capabilities to track user motion and measure steps throughout their days. The M7 synthesizes data from the iPhone’s accelerometer and internal pedometer to better understand the device’s motion through space—and, therefore, the motion of its user. The technology made it possible for software to measure actionable user data without the need to purchase additional equipment or sync up with an external pedometer.

Now, Apple seeks to create a cohesive experience on iOS, integrating health metric data from all possible fitness applications and connected devices into one unified place and deliver the results in a simple, digestible format. Its answer is HealthKit, a platform in iOS 8 that will allow apps and devices to send their data to the operating system, where it will be collated and refined in a user-facing app called Health. This approach might seem like an obvious evolution of its ecosystem, but Apple foresees HealthKit having a greater impact on users’ lives than simply evaluating their diet or reporting their step count—HealthKit aims to reinvent the entire healthcare industry.

Apps may experience unification, dry mouth

Developers at Punchkick are as excited as those at WWDC, so we sat down with a few of them and got their honest impressions about HealthKit and the impact it’s going to have. Sean Samocki, an iOS engineer at Punchkick, believes HealthKit is going to change how developers approach health-related projects.

“Developing a health-focused app is going to be completely different from now on,” Samocki says. “Your app doesn’t have to ask users for the information directly—it’s all available as part of the system now.”

With HealthKit, external fitness devices and activity-monitoring applications can now submit their data findings to iOS and receive other information back, allowing for perspectives that take into account dozens of different health metrics from a wide variety of sources. This kind of access to user data will allow apps to offer unique takes about users’ health states, and offer detailed analysis based on disparate sources like the heart rate data from a pulse-tracking wearable and pedometer data from the iPhone’s M7 chip. But the opportunities for sharing these recordings doesn’t stop there.

“Apple’s kind of teasing developers with these 60 different categories where you can share data,” says Samocki.

A wealth of health metric categories including caloric intake, sleep cycle quality, and blood pressure can all be quantified and organized by the HealthKit system, so users can compare findings from a variety of sources and draw their own conclusions from a more complete picture of their wellness makeup. And because these recordings are all logged in a centralized archive stored locally on each iPhone, iOS users can now carry a complete and objective history of their medical status with them anywhere they go.

Patients from the previous century should not take HealthKit

There’s a distinction between “fitness” applications and medical data, but HealthKit aims to bridge that gap. As new accessories from medical companies make it possible to track and store information about body mass, body temperature, and respiration, doctors will be able to continuously monitor their patients’ conditions over time. Apple seeks to formalize this idea with the “Medical ID,” a feature of the iOS Health application that provides a snapshot of each user’s medical condition and their complete health history. As Punchkick iOS developer John Norton points out,

“There are many possible applications to HealthKit—there’s the fitness aspect, but there’s also a more serious benefit in the form of medical records.”

The conversion to electronic medical records has been a long and arduous process for healthcare providers, but, true to form, Apple aims to simplify the idea with their more elegant solution. By partnering with industry leaders like the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic, Apple is positioning itself to make a serious impact in the healthcare industry, which can historically be slow to adopt new, innovative ideas. Part of their hesitance has stemmed from security concerns, but Punchkick iOS engineer J.C. Subida assures us that Apple’s thought the issue through.

“Apple has been clear that it’s emphasizing security and privacy with HealthKit, and that’s really important,” reports Subida. “Users don’t want their personal health information to be visible to just any app.”

The layer of security baked into iOS extends to include HealthKit, meaning that communication between apps is extremely limited and closely monitored. This attention to security will be attractive to major players in the healthcare industry, and bolster Apple’s vision of a world with centralized, uncomplicated, and accessible medical records. “I’m glad [Apple] approached it from a ‘hippocratic’ standpoint,” points out Samocki. “Apps don’t have free range to the data that users put in HealthKit.”

Ask your doctor if HealthKit is right for you

 

“The healthcare industry is ripe for disruption,” said Norton.

Apple envisions a world where patients’ complete medical information is available to them transparently on their iPhone, and updates by the moment thanks to a fleet of connected fitness devices and supported apps. This health focus will surely be complemented by a heightened public thirst for HealthKit-compatible products, strengthening existing players and leveling the playing field for newcomers. The impact on growing industries of connected fitness devices is no surprise, but the influence on users’ everyday lives will be even greater.

“The fact that it’s right on the iPhone, and that it brings in data from all kinds of different apps will make it so easy for people to get a better picture of their overall health,” said Subida. “It’s really exciting—both as a developer and an iOS user.”

New opportunities afforded by Apple’s platform will spur an entirely new class of health-conscious apps and services—health aggregators that can tap into the HealthKit information exchange and discover hidden patterns or make more informed lifestyle suggestions. “It’s going to be very cool to see what developers come up with [for HealthKit],” said Samocki. “Really, I’m interested to see how many apps will already be HealthKit-enabled when iOS 8 comes out.”

“I think there’s going to be a massive push to improve the quality of all the wearable fitness products that are coming out,” said Norton. “If a company—maybe even Apple—can come up with a wearable that’s constantly reading health data but is also comfortable to wear, that would be huge.”

Beyond the market implications of Apple’s theoretical iWatch, the ramifications of universally available and instantly analytical medical records could wholly transform the medical industry. “If doctors have all of this information at their fingertips,” said Norton, “they can begin to accrue a massive collective pool of medical records. Imagine a system that can sift through all those records and find patterns. The process of diagnosing patients would be completely changed.” For now, HealthKit might make it easier to see if you should take the stairs on Monday. But going forward, Punchkick’s developers believe that the platform’s potential is limitless.

“Apple’s laying the groundwork for a lot of incredible stuff,” said Norton. “People should be looking further down the road to understand how significant this disruption is really going to be.”