title: Apple HealthKit and Health App: Patient Uptake and Barriers in Primary Care.
abstract: The Apple (Cupertino, CA) HealthKit is a new telemonitoring platform that promises to make it easier for patients and healthcare institutions to collect, transmit, and store data from devices that monitor common conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. To assess the potential use for this platform in primary care, we need to know how many Apple Healthkit users there are and if they have conditions that could benefit from telemonitoring.
  
  
  
  We examined patients in the Mayo Clinic primary care practice in Rochester, MN, who registered to connect to their Mayo Clinic medical record with Apple HealthKit. We used the primary care registry to identify users with chronic conditions of diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and depression. We also examined users for recent measurements of blood pressure, glucose, hemoglobin A1C, and cholesterol.
  
  
  
  Of 98,151 patients there were 503 registrants of HealthKit. There were 95 (19%) who had hypertension, 37 (7.4%) who had diabetes, 125 (25%) who had depression, and 56 (11%) who had asthma. Overall, there were 245 (49%) who had readily telemonitorable conditions.
  
  
  
  Almost half of primary care Apple HealthKit registrants have conditions that could benefit from telemonitoring. This pre-installed telemonitoring platform, available on every new iPhone(®) (Apple), can be used to monitor a significant number of primary care patients. However, it also has continued provider and informatics barriers that need to be addressed.
authors.affiliation: Primary Care Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic , Rochester, Minnesota.
authors.forename: Frederick
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: North
authors.affiliation: Primary Care Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic , Rochester, Minnesota.
authors.forename: Rajeev
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chaudhry
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D015190:Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring; D001794:Blood Pressure; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000628:therapy*; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D006442:Glycated Hemoglobin; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D063731:Mobile Applications; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000458:organization & administration*; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D006442:Glycated Hemoglobin
keywords: home health monitoring; mobile health; technology; telemedicine