In what appears to be a first, the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans has successfully integrated Apple’s HealthKit with its Epic EHR.

The six-hospital health system’s integration efforts with Apple's new health platform, which serves to aggregate consumers' health data from myriad health applications into the EHR, began with a pilot program earlier this year that monitored heart failure patients at their homes.

Using a wireless scale, patients were able to track their weight on a daily basis, with the data being sent electronically to Ochsner's MyChart EHR.

This, officials pointed out, allowed clinicians to monitor these patients at home and adjust their medication via phone and ultimately avoid preventable hospitalizations.

"In the past, we relied on patients to log information, bring it to us, and then we would input the data and decide a course of action," said Robert Bober, MD, director of cardiac molecular imaging at Ochsner Medical Center, in a prepared statement. "Now we can share information seamlessly between patient and physician to allow real-time, accurate analysis of a patient's health status."

For patients with chronic diseases like heart failure or diabetes, Bober said, this announcement has big implications.

To integrate HealthKit with Epic, Ochsner built its own interfaces, Richard Milani, MD, chief clinical transformation officer at the health system, said in the statement.

"Now, patients can choose which information will be shared with us automatically," he said.

Ochsner is not the only health system working to integrate HealthKit into its EHR.

This summer, in fact, there were reports that Apple was also teaming up with the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins and Mount Sinai, though specifics have not emerged from those discussion as of publication time.

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