Reuters noted today that Apple is working with healthcare professionals at hospitals across the country, including Mount Sinai and John Hopkins, in preparation for the rollout of the HealthKit system in iOS 8. The goal is to ensure that medical personnel are ready to read data from the system when it ships later this year.
This move is hardly surprising, as Apple intends HealthKit to serve as a collection place for all of a user’s health-related data, which can be valuable—even lifesaving—during a medical emergency. In fact, the Mayo Clinic demoed the first HealthKit-enabled application earlier this year during WWDC:
[tweet https://twitter.com/mayoclinic/status/473569681539096576 align=’center’]
The iWatch will be revealed in October, and will work with software running on the next-generation version of iOS. That software will launch alongside updated iPhone hardware this fall. The software has been available in beta form to developers for several months now and has received several upgrades and features during that time.
