Dive Brief:
- Ricky Bloomfield, MD, director of technology strategy at Duke Medicine and Apple HealthKit advocate, stated Apple plans to support Health Level 7 (HL7) Continuity of Care Document (CCD) to its forthcoming software platform iOS 10, Healthcare IT News reported.
- Bloomfield's comments, Healthcare IT News stated, were made at the MobiHealthNews 2016 event.
- While Apple did not announce CCD support at its Worldwide Developer Conference, Bloomfield stated he was personally informed by Apple officials the support for HL7 CCD would be included in the new software platform.
Dive Insight:
Though HealthKit had a bit of a rocky launch, the tech giant continues to expand its reach into the healthcare sector. At it's developer conference this week, Apple showcased its increased focus on fitness. What comes with that is the idea of sharing fitness data (interoperability!) and comparing and contrasting the data with colleagues (gamification!). The company will welcome new fitness, wellness apps Breathe, Activity, and Wheelchair to its Watch.
With all the fun and games and steps going on, health data will need the ability to integrated and shared across platforms. That's where HL7 support comes in. The standards help facilitate clinical and healthcare administrative data to be move and read across software applications.
Apple is expected to release iOS 10 in the fall.