Health Connect adds support for medical records in Android 16

• Android 16 will bring a major update to Health Connect, allowing it to support medical records in FHIR format, starting with immunization records.

• This update allows health and fitness apps to read and write medical data through new APIs, requiring explicit user consent.

• Google’s Health Connect aims to standardize and simplify the sharing of health and fitness data across different apps and healthcare systems.

Google announces first developer preview Android16 Today gives us an early look at some of the new features coming in next year’s big update. Although there are not many changes in the first developer preview, it is confirmed that Android 16 will include a major update to the Health Connect service, adding support for medical records.

Health Connection It is a service that makes the job of your favorites easier. health and fitness apps On Android to share data with each other. Essentially, it provides a single, common language through which health and fitness apps can communicate.

For example, let’s say you installed a fitness tracking app to track your heart rate data while running, but then you want to switch to a different app. The first app you install may store your heart rate data in a way that the second app cannot process without converting it. It wouldn’t be too complicated for developers to make these conversions if there were just one or two health and fitness apps, but they have dozens of apps to handle.

This is a problem that Health Connect gracefully solves by providing a single set of APIs for developers to read and write the health and fitness data they need to process. The first fitness tracking app in the example above may write the heart rate data it collects about you to Health Connect, which stores that data in a local database, so the second app can read the same data later. This isn’t a one-time thing, as apps can use the new feature. Background and history reading features of Health Connect to access all your health and fitness data and keep it constantly updated.

The power of Health Connect is all in its APIs

But one of Health Connect’s limitations is that apps can only access or store data for which the service actually provides an API. Health Connect supports many different types of data, broadly categorized under six categories: Activity, Body Measurement, Cycle Tracking, Nutrition, Sleep, and Vitals. Medical records are not currently supported by Health Connect, but this is changing in Android 16.

Apps like Fitbit can currently read and write your health and fitness data to Health Connect, but not your medical records.

Start date: Android 16 Developer Preview 1Health Connect allows apps to read and write your medical data through a new set of APIs. The first developer preview includes an early version of these APIs that will allow applications to write your medical records to FHIR format. FHIR stands for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and basically does what Health Connect does, except for electronic health records. What I mean is that it standardizes the way electronic health records are recorded and accessed so that different healthcare systems can easily export and import your health records. Google says these new Health Connect APIs are currently in early access and require explicit user permission for use, but did not offer further details.

Luckily, since the Health Connect app is open source, we managed to find a few more details about this new feature. For starters, we learned that Health Connect will first support vaccination registrations (MEDICAL_RESOURCE_TYPE_IMMUNIZATION), but it is stated that Google will expand its support to include lab results, medications, and more in the future. To read and write vaccination data to Health Connect, apps will need to request the new data android.permission.health.READ_MEDICAL_DATA_IMMUNIZATION And android.permission.health.WRITE_MEDICAL_DATA permissions respectively. The second permission is not specific to writing vaccination data as it provides access to the new Health Connects. createMedicalDataSource It is API.

Meanwhile, the Health Connect app on Android 16 will add a new health records browse button that will be located under the manage data section on the app’s home screen. We don’t have screenshots of this section yet, but we did manage to grab a screenshot of Google’s updated Health Connect Toolbox app, which Google used to test this new feature.

Google hasn’t yet said whether it will bring medical records support to Health Connect Android15 and below, but we’d be surprised if the company limits this feature to Android 16. After all, Health Connect has been available as a standalone app from the very beginning, and even Android’s built-in version can be updated independently of the operating system. Project Outline module.