Google launches the beta of its platform for exchanging health and sports data between apps

Health Connect, Google’s new platform presented at the past Google I/O, to enable the exchange of health data and sports activities between applications in the Android ecosystem in a secure manner, is now beginning to be available in beta phase after months in phase early access.

And with its arrival in beta comes the first “wave” of integrations with the following key partners: Lifesum, Fitbit, MyFitnessPal, Dexcom (glucose monitoring), Samsung Health, Oura (maker of the smart ring), Peloton, Flo and W.W.

Simplifying life for health app developers and users

Thus, as an example:

Android users will now be able to sync and get credit for their Peloton workouts in apps like Oura, MyFitnessPal, WeightWatchers and Lifesum. Now, through a single integration with Health Connect, Peloton members will have the option to share their training stats across the entire ecosystem of apps they use to support their overall wellness.

Developers will benefit from Health Connect by not having to create and maintain multiple API connections to share data between different applications, which is quite expensive to create and maintain over time, limiting data exchange capabilities between applications, as was previously the case. in the past.

Google notes that:

Health Connect provides a standardized data schema that supports more than 40 data types in 6 categories. The scheme is intuitive to use and covers a wide range of use cases, from exercises to sleep tracking and vital signs. It only requires a few lines of code to read and write any of these data types to Health Connect.

And for users, they’ll benefit from having a central place to set the privacy settings they want through the granular controls available directly in the Health Connect app.

This makes it possible for users to know the data that they are using applications related to health and sports activities from a centralized place instead of having to go from application to application to know and manage the settings.

And of course, this saves developers from having to integrate privacy settings into their apps, further simplifying their product development.

Google is optimistic about what’s to come, inviting more developers to integrate Health Connect, as well as offering documentation, video tutorials, and sample code, so they can get started with implementations in their respective products.

More information: Google