My iPhone X, iOS 11.2.5, has a built-in health app, “Health”. It might’ve been present in earlier iOS versions, but I didn’t notice it. It has some neat features. E. g., reports distance that I walked or ran each day, and the number of stair flights climbed.

But there’s another Apple health app, “MyChart” that you can get (free) from the App Store. MyChart can be connected with your health care provider, and provides many useful services:

Test Results: Provides detailed info about tests, such as blood work, that you’ve had.

Messsges: Messages to/from your physician(s).

Appointments: A list of past appointments by date with the nature of the visit. And reports current appointments by date & time. And you can schedule new appointments.

Medications: A list of prior prescriptions, and an option to request a refill for each of them.

Health Reminders: A list of inoculations that you need to get again. Possibly other things too…

Health Summary: Lists drugs that you’re known to be allergic to. At least that’s all that mine shows.

Billing: Reports outstanding balance and recent payments. And an option to sign up for paperless billing.

Questionnaires: You can enter various info about yourself, such as tobacco use, alcohol consumption, etc.

After you download the app, you must call your medical service provider to get a one-time access code in order to set a username & password for the app.

It’s especially easy to get into MyChart with the iPhone X, because there’s a “Use Face ID” button that eliminates the need to enter the MyChart password.

Likely there’s a similar Android app.

Many years ago there was a push to EHR (Electronic Health Records) and something called "meaningful use". Meaningful use simply stated that hospitals couldnt meet new requiremnts by making records digital, they had to be actionable and portable. There were various sticks and carrots used by .gov to prod the healthcare industry to make all health records digital to facilitate better care and less waste. For example, let's say that you have blood work or an x-ray done at one provider that are stored on paper charts or printed films. When you are referred to another provider those results are not very portable so you end up getting more blood work or another x-ray. This drives cost, increases radiation exposure and a host of other bad things.

The transition and adoption has been a bumpy and expensive road and hasn't produced the full results. The fact is that smaller providers can't afford the infrastructure to send, receive and store all of this data. Heck, even big providers struggle with all of it. I know of large hospitals that have spent $200m on EHR roll outs and it still doesn't work in all departments for all results or all patients, at least not the way it was intended.

The PHR (Personal Health Record) is probably the the next step in electronic health records. The smartphone with gigs of data onboard and cloud backup is in the pocket of almost every patient. What better place to store all of his or her records? One day, at least in theory, you could walk into a new provider or specialist office, open an app on your phone, and forward instantly any medical data they required regardless of where it was acquired. Any new results from any visit could be sent to your PHR the same way. You essentially become a walking repository of your own complete health record including things like your lifetime accumulated radiation dose from various scans.

TXJIM, thanks for that info. There’s an “Axilla PHR Personal Health Record” app in the Apple App Store. Is that the PHR that you describe? Looking at the app description, I haven’t figured out how data from a medical provider is made available to the Axilla app.

Locally they've just consolidated numerous separate online patient "portals" into MyChart. Reviews from patients and providers has been mixed. Google is not to be trusted and I'd feel the same about Apple if I had an iOS phone rather than Android. I refuse to put an access app on my smartphone worried about privacy. I feel access from my home desktop is quite sufficient.

There are several companies building out UI's but their utility will be limited until the provider EHR's can interface directly with the patient's PHR. A true PHR, as described above, won't be available until some standards are adopted and there is infrastructure to support it bi-directionally. This will likely need a big push from .gov or some nimble .com figuring out how to monetize the build out. Amazon maybe.....

My Samsung 6 has a Health App that can measure Heart Rate and Ox2 / Stress Levels.
Has a Step counter as well -
All FREE -

Uses the sensor below the Flash. Very accurate as I matched the last Doctor visit BPM.

Kinda handy -

My health care provider has all of these services online, but I choose not to have them linked to my phone. I find it very useful for managing chronic conditions.

Apple has proven that they don't give a damn about preservation of health data when you upgrade iOS. I had a bunch of health data manually input in there and it was gone after an iOS upgrade.

I guess if you're connecting to your health care provider's data you'll be able to retrieve it later.

I think the most likely player to figure this out will be IBM Watson Health. Once their cloud is HIPPA certified they could quickly build out the infrastructure to offer a PHR service. This would fit nicely with the niche they are trying to carve out in the healthcare space and could incorporate their Watson analytics in novel ways.

I use my chart with both United Health and Ohio State medical center. Mostly appointment reminders and billing but I've had very good response to my questions from providers when I use the messaging in the app.