How to make Apple HealthKit send data to your app

If you’re building a health or fitness application of any kind, you likely know of the power of real-time user data. You will benefit when integrating it with your application no matter what your use case is: mindfulness or wellness, digital health, or remote care. But how can you get this data?

Apple allows developers to ask their users to access and share their health data through Apple HealthKit, which was introduced with iOS 8 on all iPhones and iPads.

What is Apple HealthKit?

Apple HealthKit is a developer framework that manages the communication, consent, and sharing of health data between third-party apps and Apple Health. HealthKit uses secure user authorization through native iOS settings to give users control over what data is shared with which app.

Apple HealthKit was introduced to enable app developers to build new, engaging health and wellness experiences by accessing and using their users’ health data. It allows developers to get health data like steps, activity, sleep, heart rate, or ECGs from Apple Health.

Apple Health stores all health data recorded by the iPhone, Apple Watch, and third-party apps focusing on nutrition (YAZIO, Lifesum), wellbeing (Calm, Headspace, Clue), fitness (MyFitnessPal, Runtastic, Strava), and more. All data shown in Apple Health is stored locally on the user’s device and does not upload to any cloud.

How do I get data from Apple Health?

To access any of your users’ health data stored in Apple Health, you need to add the HealthKit framework to your iOS app by enabling HealthKit capabilities in Xcode. By using certain methods you can request permission from your user to read and write data with your app.

To actually get the data you need to access it by using direct method calls, queries, or long-running queries – depending on how you want to retrieve the data and how background retrieval might work.

You can get data through Apple HealthKit by using Thryve’s technology as well. We provide the SDKs you will need to easily access data from Apple Health and many other data sources like Fitbit Google Fit, Samsung Health, or Withings.

Does Apple Health have an API?

No, Apple Health does not have an API. As no data is stored in the cloud, you need to retrieve it locally from your users’ devices. This can be done by implementing Apple HealthKit and all its data retrieval methods into your iOS. Or you use service providers like Thryve to integrate Apple Health and many other data sources by integrating one plug-and-play SDK. When using Thryve you will be able to retrieve your users’ Apple Health through our wearable API or locally on the device.