I’ve never been a fan of Apple’s Health app. It’s arguably the least user-friendly app Apple has ever designed for iOS. When I use it I feel like I’m scrolling through medical documents at a doctor’s office. The reality is that if Apple wants users to focus on health, it needs to present my activity, water consumption, sleep habits, mindful minutes, and the like in a cleaner and aesthetically pleasing way. Right now it’s in weird lists and graphs.
The Apple Watch is an incredible health and fitness device and Apple doesn’t shy away from positioning it as such. It includes a number of features out of the box like a Breathe app for meditation, a Workout app that tracks your heart rate, and an Activity app to monitor your movements and remind you to stay active.
For the past year, Health app lived in a folder called “Extras”, on the last screen of my iPhone. Now, the new iOS 10 Health app is on the first Home screen. This is largely because of the redesigned “Today” view that gives me a birds eye view of all the important data related to my health that’s recorded in the app. Another awesome thing in the new app? The ability to manually add data for everything from vitals like blood pressure, to caffeine intake.
Apple wants to make it easier than ever to donate organs by allowing fans to register as donors via their iPhone. With a new software update, users will be able to sign up through the Health app that is pre-installed on every device.
Apple has hired a top doctor who specializes in treating children with diabetes. Rajiv Kumar, who created a HealthKit-enabled monitoring app for young patients, is now working at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University part-time.
