iHealth Labs, a subsidiary of China-based Andon Health that produces wireless health monitoring devices, announced partnerships with EHR-maker Practice Fusion and with popular memory-aid app Evernote.
Practice Fusion is the first EHR-maker to partner with iHealth, Adam Lin, general manager of iHealth Labs, told MobiHealthNews. The first phase of the partnership will allow physicians who use Practice Fusion to give their patients special offers on and access to iHealth products. But in a few months, Lin said, Practice Fusion's patient health record will integrate with data from iHealth devices.
"It's imperative to us that our devices will actually integrate with the EMRs and the EHRs," he said. "There has to be a way our information can flow into the system."
iHealth's blood pressure monitor and weight scale are Bluetooth-enabled, and currently sync with iHealth MyVitals, iHealth's free app announced last month. But the company wants to make the data from their app available to consumers in more ways, Lin said.
"We've been a little bit slower to the game of integrating with third party apps. Evernote is part of that even though they're a little bit unique," he said. "Our strategy has always been to allow our users to see and manage our data elsewhere. Not all users will utilize our application as a dashboard."
Evernote isn't a health app, per se. It bills itself as an app to help people remember everything, and it integrates a camera, a voice recorder, and a "web clipper," for taking online screenshots. iHealth device data will integrate with Evernote in the form of a Results Card that will be generated when someone takes a reading. The system will also generate a summary card at the end of each week.
Lin said a lot of iHealth users have requested integration with other apps, such as RunKeeper, and the company wants to keep pace with those requests. Towards that end, the company recently made it's API publicly available.
Although Practice Fusion and Evernote share Morgenthaler Ventures as a major investor, Lin said that relationship is just a coincidence.
The simultaneous move into both consumer-facing and physician-facing health integration shows that iHealth is positioning its devices for a variety of use cases. But Lin said they're really just two different vectors for connecting people with data about their body.
"This is just the beginning for us," he said. "At the end of the day the person with the device considers themselves a consumer, a patient or both. Whether you buy or product from Apple or get it from your doctor, the person is the same. We're targeted at that person, with the goal of true mobility, allowing your information to move with you."