Apple devices offer a wide range of services. This year with the launch of ios 14, Apple has released a wide range of new features and privacy settings. Apple’s smartwatches have been sporting a heart monitoring system to track real-time cardiac data.
On its iPhone devices, Apple brings its own health app which tracks various health-related data. The Cupertino giant has added a new feature to its already existing health app on iOS.
The Health app on iPhones can display full health records of the users. The feature was first introduced in 2018. However, this feature was only available for users in the US. Now however apple has extended it to two UK and Canada. This enables the users to securely view and even store their medical records from their healthcare institutions located in the UK and Canada.
The Oxford University Hospitals in the UK and the Women’s College Hospital in Canada are among the first healthcare institutions to adopt this feature available to their patients via ios.
Apple’s Electronic Health Record feature passes the information between the user and his healthcare securely.
This means that the information shared between the user’s iPhone and healthcare provider is encrypted. To increase privacy even more apple has made sure that the information is transmitted directly without any intermediary server storage.
The Health Records data on a user’s device is fully locally stored. Accessible only via user’s passcode and Touch ID or Face ID for the devices that support those.
Apple’s vice president of Technology, Kevin Lynch, stated, “We designed Health Records on iPhone to empower people to view their health records at any time easily, and we are thrilled to put this feature in the hands of customers in the UK and Canada. We believe people should have access to their health information most privately and securely, and we have worked for hand in hand with healthcare institutions and organizations to put privacy at the center of the patient experience.”
The EHR feature creates a direct connection between medical institutions and a patient’s iPhone. The connection is not only vital but also protected. This allows users to securely access their data, such as allergies, conditions, immunizations, lab results, medications, procedures, and vitals.
The Health Record’s feature in Apple’s health care allows users to add multiple healthcare locations automatically. Allowing to store their records without maintaining separate login credentials for every health care service provider.
Many have tried incorporating the benefits of EHR, but have failed to impact at a global scale. With iPhones having more than half of shares in the smartphone market, the EHR can soon very well see a global take off.
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