Google has jumped into the health aggregation game with Apple and Samsung, by unveiling a service that manages health and fitness data generated by myriad apps and wearable sensors, the company confirmed at its I/O conference for developers today, which confirms our exclusive report on the planned platform.
The idea is to help create a comprehensive view of people’s health by aggregating things like weight, diet and even heart rate into a data platform that Google will manage, and which other apps can tap into with users’ permission.
The idea is to create “more comprehensive apps,” Google says. “If a user grants permission, the apps have access to your entire fitness stream.” Google’s goal here is to “centralize everything.”
At this point the service appears to be geared more towards developers than consumers, and in giving apps and brands a “unified view of a user’s fitness activity.”
In the last two months Apple and Samsung have both launched their own versions of platforms that aggregate health data, called HealthKit and Sami.
While the services seem initially similar to one another, one difference between Apple and Google’s announcements was the number of partnerships already in play.
Apple said little beyond its work with the Mayo Clinic. But Google announced more than a dozen apps that had already agreed to integrate with its platform, including Nike+, Withings, Runkeeper Basis, Adidas and Mio, which makes a wrist band with an integrated heart rate monitor.
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