9 Awesome Health Apps That Leverage HealthKit

The Best Health Apps Using HealthKit

Everybody is excited about the latest iOS 8 update because it includes HealthKit. Healthkit alows developers who are building apps to integrate the health data they collect with other apps and with the Apple Health app. It means as a user your health data across apps and devices can be mingled together to give you a better picture all around. Healthkit makes it seamless, putting it in one place.

While it still very news, there are already app developers who have taken advantage of this new functionality and integrated it into their apps. We pulled together of the best health apps integrated with HealthKit and there is a pretty wide range, from personal training apps to bloodpressure apps to better sleep apps. If you own a new iPhone and haven’t already done so, take a look at the Health app and try out some of these apps to see how it all works together.

Fitness Apps

FitStar Personal Trainer

FitStar Personal Trainer is a cool workout app that acts like a personal trainer in your pocket. It gives you custom programs with a few clicks, including those for when you aren’t in the gym (think traveling for work and staying in a crappy hotel).

For less than the cost of a single personal training session, get an entire year of Premium with access to exclusive, personalized Programs for losing weight and gaining strength, a variety of new workouts added monthly, HD video, and much more. FitStar’s dynamic Programs continually adjust to your feedback, goals, and capabilities — just like a personal trainer! And FitStar constantly brings you new Moves and Sessions to keep things fun, fresh, and fit.

Strava Running and Cycling

This cool apps lets you track your runs and rides with GPS, join Challenges and see how your running and riding compares with friends. Bare with us because this app has so many features it would take a page to list them all. Our favorite features include the ability to follow routes you’ve created or found and view your activity map as you record. It then tracks stats like distance, pace, speed, elevation gained and calories burned and collects heart rate, power and cadence data from ANT+ and Bluetooth LE sensors. Then you can follow friend or see yourself on the leaderboard. We love the idea of this feature as it can really drive that competitive spirit most of us harbor deep inside

UP by Jawbone

UP is an app that tries to be like the new Apple Health app Apple itself created. It basically provides a step by step and full immersive array of features for becoming healthier. It tracks your daily activity, diet and sleep and then uses that data to show you how to make adjustments that, over time improve your health. No UP or UP24 wristband required which is nice, you can just get on with it. You can connect UP to Apple Health and it will track using your available steps and sleep data.

UP is like a coach that gets to know you, then guides you to make simple decisions that lead to a more active life. With step tracking, workout logging and Insight Reports, UP is way more than a pedometer. Add friends to your team to cheer and be cheered.

Sleepio

Who doesn’t want better sleep. I’ve been personally testing this app and I love it. Sleepio is a clinically-proven sleep improvement program designed to teach you how to overcome even long term poor sleep without pills or potions. Created by world sleep expert, Professor Colin Espie it is a program. This app really benefits longer term poor-sleepers like myself. Perhaps most impressive is that this app has the data to back up its effectiveness – you can fall asleep up to 50% faster, reduce time awake at night by up to 60%, and boost your daytime energy by up to 50%. Yep, I need that.

Food Apps

Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal

Want to lose weight? There is nothing like counting calories and tracking your diet to keep you on track. Too bad doing that manually sucks. Well now you can use MyFitnessPal. I’ve tried diet apps before and they are really tough to use. I have found MyFitnessPal to be the fastest and easiest-to-use calorie counter. It has a huge food database and data entry is easy. This app has taken advantage of HealthKit by allowing you to add your meal summaries to HealthKit, synching your weight with HealthKit and even add exercises from other HealthKit apps to your diary so you can see how diet and exercise when coupled together improve your health in very specific terms.

Noom Coach: Weight Loss

While the above app is all about calories and tracking, Noom Coach is focused on habits. It gives you a user specifci weight loss approach that is tailored ot creating lifelong eating habits. Unlike an ordinary food log or calorie counter, Noom Coach provides focused guidance and encouraging feedback — backed by science — to help you build healthy eating habits that last. Every motning the app gives you a couple of important things to focus on. Follow the guidance and you get feedback. It is really simple and doesn’t bombard you with 1,000 things to do at once, which often dooms us all to diet failure. It also leverages HealthKit by synching calories and allowing you to see it alongside your other stats and apps into one picture.

Panera Bread

The official iPhone app from Panera Bread puts great food at your fingertips. Find the nearest bakery-café, browse our menu, manage your account, and place an order (at participating locations). We are rolling out more locations every week and will be available in all areas soon! This is also the first retail app we’ve seen that has the HealthKit integration, with a cool feature that allows you to send nutrition information from the Panera Bread menu directly to the Health app. That’s cool.

Healthcare Apps

AskMD

AskMD checks your symptoms and helps you get better. With personalized consultation that helps identify what’s bothering you and gets you organized around your health, enabling you to have a better doctor’s visit and ultimately get healthier. It has a big database of ailments too, including everything from Diabetes to stomach pains. The latest version for iOS 8 and includes integration with Apple’s new Health app, allowing you to synchronize your current health data, including age, biological sex, height, weight and blood pressure. It also gives you the ability to populate your health vitals in AskMD’s Health Check, providing an animated snapshot of your personal health.

Qardio health and blood pressure monitor

Don’t be scared away just because this app requires a QardioArm wireless blood pressure monitor. Buy the moniter and get the app, it is such a great solution for people with blood pressure issues. This award-winning, clinically validated blood pressure monitor basically measures your systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate. You connect your QardioArm smart blood pressure monitor to the internet (wirelessly) and to the app and it will allow you to measure, record and share your vital heart information simply and effortlessly. The new Healthkit integration puts all that data into one place.

Patient IO

Want to receive treatment-specific reminders, tasks & education from your health provider sent directly to your smartphone? Download this app now (check to make sure your care provider supports it of course). No more scribbled Doctor’s notes that you can’t read because Patient IO lets you get health information related to your condition & treatment in this awesome app. The educational content with images and videos is very helpful and it takes you through all your daily tasks on your road to recovery. It even sends you reminders so you can remember important health tasks. They added various user interface improvements to help streamline your Patient IO experience in the recent update, including of course added support for HealthKit! Now Patient IO can read and write your health data using HealthKit to make it easier than ever to complete tasks in your care plan. To enable this feature, login to Patient IO and navigate to your user’s settings screen. (iPhone-only)

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