At their Google I/O developer conference, Google and Samsung today announced health connectiona new initiative that will simplify connectivity between health and fitness apps to allow users to share their data between apps.
Accessing and synchronizing this data is currently relatively difficult for developers, so Health Connect will provide them with a number of services and APIs to make it easier.
“Health Connect allows you to store and access health-related information across devices with user consent, removing all the boilerplate, taking care of security issues, but also allowing you to combine that information,” Sean McBreen, who leads the developer experience. for Android at Google, he told me in a briefing before today’s announcement. He stressed that, as with everything Wear OS, Google worked closely with Samsung on this project, so in the future, apps like Google Fit, Samsung Health, MyFitnessPal, Leap Fitness, Withings, and others will also start using this new API, which will give these services a new on-device synchronization surface.
Essentially, Health Connect will function as the clearinghouse for health and fitness data on the device. In fact, all data is on the device and encrypted to ensure privacy. “Users will have full control over their privacy settings, with granular controls to see which apps are requesting data access at any given time,” explains Google. This also means that users can easily close access or delete data as they see fit.
One cool feature: If multiple apps provide the same data, users can choose which one to prioritize.
Health Connect beta is now available to developers on Google Play so they can start developing and testing their apps.
