✚ Healthbook - Apple's foray into mHealth

A few days ago, rumors surfaced about Apple’s upcoming release of their next iPhone operating system (iOS 8) and the much-rumored ‘iWatch’ device. The rumors include details of a new health and fitness app with the code name ‘Healthbook’. Here are a few links:

I highly recommend each of these articles to get a broad picture; for those who are time limited, the first post from 9to5Mac gives great overall context while the analyses from Fred Wilson and MG Siegler (two tech VCs) discuss important questions.

To Fred Wilson’s point about hooking collected data into existing health infrastructure via APIs, not only does there need to be data exchange but there also has to be demonstrated value. We always think more data is better. More data is only better when it is actionable. The big elephant in the mHealth/quantified self room is that no one has quite figured out what to do with all the data. Some highly motivated quantified selfers are using it to change their habits, but what impact will it have on the rest of the world?