Apple is to embark on trials that, if successful, would enable US customers automatically to download and view their medical records on their iPhones.
The service, accessed through Apple’s Health app, will be tested by 12 hospitals and clinics including the Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles and John Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.
Users will see their medical information from different health facilities organised into one dashboard covering conditions, allergies, immunisations, lab results, medicines, procedures and vitals, and will receive notifications when their data is updated.
Apple will not be able to see patients’ data, which will be encrypted and stored locally or in the cloud, the tech group said as it detailed its plan.
Until now, patients’ medical records have mostly been held in multiple locations, requiring patients to log into different providers’ websites and piece together the information. Centralising patient records has been seen as a holy grail in a US healthcare market worth more than $3 trillion a year.
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Analysts said it could be difficult for Apple to scale the project nationwide. The US government and companies including Google and Microsoft have spent billions attempting it but failed to deliver. Google Health was discontinued in 2011, three years after its launch. Apple could have an advantage because hospital IT systems are more streamlined than they were a few years ago.
Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, said. “We hope to help consumers better understand their health and help them lead healthier lives.”
Stephanie Reel, of Johns Hopkins Medicine, said the new technology would make accessing secure medical records from an iPhone as simple for a patient “as checking email”.
Apple said it had no specific plan to try to make profits out of its Health app and was trying to create a better experience for users. However, a successful system could help the company to sell more handsets and bring more Americans into the company’s ecosystem.
The project is part of a wider Apple drive on health, including the building of sophisticated heart monitoring software into the Apple Watch.
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The Apple ResearchKit, launched three years ago, enables researchers to use the sensors in Apple products to monitor study participants.