Apple took a big step into the health market on Monday with Health and HealthKit, a new app and platform for iOS 8 which will work to record all the fitness tracking information you rack up during the day. Health could potentially replace a number of popular third-party iOS apps, but in a series of interviews with 9to5Macs these developers say they’re looking forward to working with HealthKit in the future. Several companies including Withings, RunKeeper, Strava and iHealth all say they’re looking forward to integrating into Apple’s Health app and developing for Health. “We are thrilled by the announcement of HealthKit’s availability,” says Withings CEO Cedric Hutchings, adding that a unified app for storing all your health data is exactly what its users want.
Whenever Apple introduces a new feature baked into iOS that was previously a domain ruled by third-party apps like its new HealthKit platform and Health app in iOS 8, questions inevitably come up about how it will impact other developers and competing platforms. That’s why we were interested in finding out how some of the top fitness and health app developers and accessory makers are reacting to Apple’s HealthKit announcement. We reached out some of the big names in the health and fitness app world, as well as companies like Withings and iHealth that sell iOS-connected health and medical accessories such as blood pressure monitors through Apple stores. Not only did all of the companies we spoke with— RunKeeper,Withings, Strava, and iHealth— confirm they are already planning integration with their ecosystems, they also talked about how having one central location for users to manage health and fitness data will indeed be a good thing for the business. RunKeeper CEO Jason Jacobs told me he’s excited that Apple is bringing “some of the other key players in the ecosystem (doctors, EMRs, etc) into the discussion” and confirmed both his RunKeeper and Breeze app will soon support Healthkit. Others are also excited for integration with the medical industry that currently uses a highly fragmented record keeping system for health data.
