Doctors Raise Concern Over iPhone 6’s HealthKit

So, your smartphone is, well, getting smarter all the time, which means there will be more and more features that are thrown into the mix to make it all the more useful in our lives. The thing is, where do we draw the line when it comes to the smartphone picking up extremely personal details about ourselves, including our health details? Apple’s HealthKit is one such example, where it will appear on the upcoming iPhone 6 alongside iOS 8, sporting the ability to track personal information such as heart rate, blood pressure, and blood glucose levels. Doctors are rather concerned that those who have an overactive imagination might read too much into the issue, and actually think that they have something worse when they are afflicted with a minor ailment.

Dr. Dushan Gunasekera, a London-based doctor, has this to say, “When iOS 8 is launched, Apple will need to make an effort to show users what [HealthKit users] should be aiming for, failing that a patient’s doctor will have to… technology is certainly not yet at the point where it can replace a real doctor. The human body is a complex object that changes from day to day and from hour to hour. Being so complex means that it will take a trained professional to look at all of your stats to make a diagnosis if something is wrong. Apple needs to make it clear that a Health app isn’t a replacement for regular checkups, it is instead a way of monitoring some of your stats in-between appointments that can affect your overall health.”