The notion that the industry isn’t exposing any data is patently false. FHIR and HL7 have been around for years now and I’ve connected many data sources into both Apple and other services that use those APIs.
FHIR helps quotes a bit, but I think the challenge is that HL7 is expensive to work with and that integrations are point to point.
I’ve also connected sources using HL7, but it’s hard to scale because it’s like everyone creating import/export interfaces to their system.
I think the benefit of Apple health is that it’s a common, trusted intermediary. Me, the patient.
I think it’s easier for me to pull data from multiple sources and show it to my doctor than for all those medical systems to share with each other so my doctor can see data. If I have 5 health services, it requires 5 export to Apple interfaces for me to collect my data, securely store it, and show it to my doc or to any one of those 5 providers.
To have provider interoperability it requires 30 interfaces (maybe my math is off 2^5-2).
There is stuff like Project Blue Button [0] that tries to make a standard interface to export data.
The complaint that it’s easy to export data is only true if you want to pay some consultant to make an interface. In the US, there’s a report on information blocking [1] that called out areas in healthcare with blocking and proposed some changes to lessen it.
