Apple has expanded its Health Records initiative to Canada and the United Kingdom. This enables healthcare institutions in the countries to offer users the ability to safely and securely check their medical records using the iPhone’s Health app.
The service has been available in the United States since 2018. To date, some 500 U.S. institutions support Health Records on iPhone. However, this is the first time Apple has expanded outside the U.S.
Health records company Epic Systems and around 60 hospital chains are pushing back against proposed government policy making it easier for patients to share medical records data with apps. Apple has supported the policy.
Epic sent a letter of opposition, signed by its supporters, to the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. Epic’s letter argues the health records sharing push will be “overly burdensome” and “will endanger patient privacy.”
Apple will be among the companies represented at a meeting today, hosted by a group that’s supporting the Department of Health and Human Services’ efforts to make it easier for patients to access and share their health data.
The organizers are nonpartisan group Carin Alliance. More than 40 people representing some of the biggest companies in the industry will attend in-person or on the phone. Apple’s representative is Ricky Bloomfield, a doctor with expertise in HealthKit and ResearchKit, who joined Apple in 2016.
Apple and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs today confirmed the availability of Health Records on iPhone for veterans across the United States and surrounding territories.
The feature promises to provide a better understanding of veterans’ health across multiple providers. They include Johns Hopkins and the University of California, San Diego.
Apple’s CEO is optimistic about his company’s plan to have the iPhone store all our health records, even though it got a black eye recently: turns out some third-party iOS apps leaked health-related data to Facebook.
But Tim Cook says that people trust Apple because the company has a deep commitment to user privacy, and people know that.
Apple today confirmed that the Health Records feature on iPhone will soon be available to veterans.
The company is working with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to ensure that, for the first time, U.S. veterans receiving care through the Veterans Health Administration will have access to their health records directly on their iPhone.
Apple is in discussions with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to provide veterans with access to their electronic medical records on iOS, a new report claims.
The company began discussions last year, with a view to allowing up to 9 million veterans to migrate their health records to iPhone to simplify medical treatment. It’s not clear how far plans have progressed since then.
Popular medication management app Medisafe has added support for Apple’s Health Records service. This means that users can more easily track the medication that they are supposed to be taking, without having to manually enter it into the app.
That’s useful not just for reminder purposes, but also for more easily and accurately tracking dosage and avoiding potentially lethal drug interactions. As a result, it could potentially save lives.
