The Healthkit app could indeed be helpful in making critical data available when and where it is needed, but I remain somewhat skeptical because of earlier efforts to provide similar patient data.
About 10 years ago, SanDisk was involved with another firm (Kinder Morgan, I believe) on a military contract that examined whether a small NAND flash memory chip, worn like a dog tag on combat personnel, would contain the patient's health history (including x-rays and other images), and could be read on any computer with software (like Acrobat) that would assure compatibility. The effort apparently went nowhere.
Microsoft also worked on servers containing personal health data, which could be accessed through the web or the cloud.
When I see the records mess at clinics, hospitals, etc., I know there must be a better way! At its best at present, some of the larger hospitals do keep records of THEIR patients but have difficulty accessing records of those coming into their system from some other hospitals or clinics. Probably most individual health records are still stored in hard copy.
As for collecting data like heart rates, blood pressure, etc., and transmitting that data routinely to collection centers that are actively treating the patient, this is where mobile devices like smartphones could perform a real service. I'm not sure Apple is as advanced in this area as Qualcomm, which has been working on medical monitoring systems for several years.
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