The first developer preview of Android 16 was just launched and it’s giving us a glance at some of the new features to look forward to for next year. The preview confirms that Android 16 will bring a nice update to the Health Connect service with support for medical records.
Health Connect makes it easier for your health and fitness apps to share data on Android. It acts as a hub over which health and fitness apps can communicate. If your fitness tracking app tracks your heart rate and you want this data to be available to a different app, Health Connect helps by providing a single set of APIs to read and write the data.
One limitation of Health Connect is that apps can access and store data on it if the service has APIs for it. Different types of data are currently supported and are categorized under Activity, Body Measurement, Cycle Tracking, Nutrition, Sleep, and Vitals. But currently, medical records are not supported, and that’s to change in Android 16.
The first preview of Android 16 shows medical records in FHIR format being supported. FHIR is Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources. This is basically a set of rules and specifications for exchanging electronic healthcare data.
The new Health Connect APIs will require explicit user consent to use, according to Google.
Reportedly, Health Connect will first support immunization records, but in the future, the feature will expand to include lab results, medications, and more, according to hints found in the app’s code by Android Police.
The Health Connect app is also going to have a new “browse health records” button with Android 16. The button is reportedly going to be positioned on the main screen under the “manage data” section.
Right now, it’s not clear whether older versions of Android will get access to the medical record support of Health Connect.
I really like the direction Google is going with this app. It’s very convenient to have one place where all your health and wellness info is stored, and adding medical records to it seems like a very useful thing.