Google and Samsung quietly revealed Well being Join final week, a brand new platform designed to share totally different sorts of well being knowledge throughout quite a lot of apps.
We lined it final week, however don’t be stunned in case you haven’t heard about it – it wasn’t revealed throughout the Google IO presentation, however reasonably on the Android Builders’ weblog.
The Android Builders’ video beneath dives just a little deeper into what Well being Join is and does. It collects 50 various kinds of knowledge throughout six classes; exercise equivalent to steps taken or energy burned, sleep, vitamin data, cycle monitoring, physique measurements equivalent to weight and BMI, and very important statistics like coronary heart price.
Well being Join will then take all this knowledge and share it between its accomplice apps, equivalent to menstrual monitoring app Flo, vitamin diary app MyFitnessPal, sensible well being system maker Withings, and exercise plan apps created by Leap. Google Match, Fitbit and Samsung Well being apps are additionally included on this expanded ecosystem, so your Pixel Watch, Fitbit Sense, or Samsung Galaxy Watch can feed data into Well being Join too.
“We’re thrilled that Samsung and Google are working collectively to satisfy this want with a brand new resolution, Well being Join,” Samsung govt VP TaeJong Yang wrote in a press launch (opens in new tab) final week. “Builders now have entry to a single set of APIs that allow the creation of health and well being experiences. With the brand new Well being Join API, customers may have a complete set of controls to handle their well being and health knowledge throughout apps.”
The top result’s set to be a extra full, holistic image of your well being, with all the info held in a single place reasonably than unfold over half-a-dozen apps. Permitting Google into this shared ecosystem may even imply, within the close to future, your well being knowledge is ready to be accessed by way of Google Dwelling’s voice instructions.
The thought isn’t essentially new, as Garmin Join gives the identical expertise to a restricted extent. Nonetheless, Google’s ubiquity and its potential to get accomplice apps onside (learn: plenty of cash) may imply Well being Join is the start of the Alphabet health empire.
Google and Samsung are clearly eager for Android builders to leap on board and experiment with the data Well being Join can present, because the extra apps that use Well being Join, the higher the service might be. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t introduced throughout Google IO: why do a giant, splashy launch in case you have a service relying on companions, and also you don’t have many companions but? For Google and Samsung, it’s higher to launch later within the 12 months and promote the possibly a whole lot of apps in a position to interface with Well being Join, than letting the cat out of the bag too early and getting a mediocre response.
It additionally explains why Google is in no actual rush to incorporate Put on OS into the most recent Fitbits, as an alternative prioritizing the Pixel Watch. It doesn’t want its personal working system to work on Fitbit gadgets proper now, as any knowledge collected by Fitbit could be fed again into the central Well being Join platform, to be shared and distributed how Google sees match.
A imaginative and prescient of the long run
You get up feeling Effectively Rested, to borrow a phrase from Skyrim. Your Fitbit smartwatch has already recorded your sleep knowledge, which is now hosted on Well being Join in addition to your Fitbit app. You eat breakfast, logging it in MyFitnessPal as traditional, which calculates the energy you’ve simply eaten and sends the info to Well being Join.
On the best way residence, you head to the health club, opening a exercise plan in your Leap app. Deciding on the exercise in Leap, your chosen routine is cross-referenced with the energy you burned throughout the exercise. That is calculated individually by your smartwatch, however each units of information get despatched to Well being Join.
If you get residence, you bounce within the bathe, pausing to step in your Withings sensible scales. The scales calculate your weight and physique fats share, sending the info to – you guessed it – Well being Join.
Lastly, exhausted in your pajamas, you ask Google Dwelling for a breakdown of your well being exercise immediately. Google Dwelling fishes Well being Join for all of your knowledge throughout 5 totally different apps, and tells you whether or not you’re in a calorie deficit or calorie surplus for the day.
Is that this the long run that awaits us? If Google and Samsung have their means, it may properly be. A single well being platform for Android customers will take time for builders to undertake, however it could possibly be a real game-changer. Nonetheless, earlier than it makes its method to the customers, we should always wait and see if it’s adopted by builders first.