Apple Seeking Data Deals for its iPhone 6 Healthkit Service

Apple (AAPL) recently huddled with health institutions Mount Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins and electronic health records provider Allscripts to consider partnerships that would position its HealthKit service as a central repository for a vast storehouse of patient information.

HealthKit is expected to be baked into Apple’s upcoming iPhone 6, which is set to debut Sept. 9 in a 4.7-inch phablet format and also perhaps in a 5.5-inch version.

Apple intends to use its HealthKit service to stake its claim to the rapidly expanding mobile healthcare market, which could be of particular importance to channel partners already concentrating on the health segment. The vendor wants its HealthKit service to operate as a place where health practitioners and users can view health data stored in one place. At this point, there is no central storage house for medical data, with providers relying on dozens of different software applications and medical devices to store patient data.

By all appearances, Apple has put a great deal of effort and resources into fleshing out the HealthKit services, according to a Reuters report. The vendor previously has partnered with Nike, Epic and the Mayo Clinic, which reportedly is trying out a service that alerts patents to abnormal test results with treatment recommendations. And, the Cleveland Clinic is said to be tinkering with a HealthKit beta version and providing feedback to Apple, while Kaiser Permanente currently is testing a few mobile apps that leverage HealthKit.

“Apple is going into this space with a data play,” Forrester Research’s Healthcare analyst Skip Snow told Reuters. “They want to be a hub of health data.”

One major snag Apple is certain to encounter is the snare of consumer privacy and federal regulations. A number of government offices are involved in one capacity or another in mobile health, Reuters reported, and to make HealthKit a viable service, Apple will have to navigate the murky waters of of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.