Google Health Connect: What is it, how it works, availability, and more

Health Connect is currently in testing phase and its beta version is available for download on the Google Play store

American technology giant Google on Monday introduced the Health Connect app. Aimed at health and fitness enthusiasts, the app allows users to connect various fitness apps to get holistic health insights on a single app. The Google Health Connect is currently in the testing phase and its beta version is available for download on the Google Play store.

Google created the Health Connect app in collaboration with Samsung. Google said the app would help users centralise the management of all fitness apps. Health Connect enables users to share health and fitness data across Android devices. In order to gain credit on an app, users can also share data of the workout they did on a different app with the Health connect app.

For example, with the Health Connect app, Android users will be able to synchronize and get credit for their Peloton workouts in apps like Oura, MyFitnessPal, WeightWatchers and Lifesum. Through a single integration with Health Connect, Peloton Members will have the option to share their workout stats across the ecosystem of apps they use to support their overall wellness.

According to Google, currently there are over ten health, fitness and wellness apps that are compatible for integration with the platform. Some of them are MyFitnessPal, Oura, Peloton, Samsung Health, Fitbit, and more.

It also simplifies the connectivity between your apps while providing centralised privacy controls for users. Earlier, users had to navigate to multiple apps to manage data permissions. With Health Connect, users can easily manage permissions in a single place, with granular controls to see which apps have access to data at any given time. Once the permission is given, the app will have access to new data and data from the past 30 days.

"Health Connect provides a standardized data schema which supports 40+ data types across 6 categories. Through the first wave of integrations, we have seen Health Connect provide many key benefits to developers." said Google in a blog post.