Moto 360 Google watch based on Android Wear 2

Google to take aim at Apple’s HealthKit with ‘Google Fit’ at I/O

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The tech industry is betting big on health and fitness. While Samsung unveiled the Sami platform last month and Apple recently announced theHealthKit at WWDC, Google also plans to launch a new heath service soon. According to a report by Forbes, some people related to the matter have revealed that Google plans to launch a health service dubbed Google Fit to collect and aggregate data from other fitness trackers and health-related apps.

 Google Fit is believed to aggregate data via open APIs. The company also plans to announce partnerships with wearable device makers. A source told the news site that the Google Fit ‘would allow a wearable device that measures data like steps or heart rate to interface with Google’s cloud-based services, and become part of the Google Fit ecosystem.’ This seems to be a direct aim at Apple’s HealthKit that is designed to pool and analyse health data. The HealthKit app can pull in data from other third-party apps and this can be accessed by healthcare professionals, depending of course on how much access users give to this app. Apple partnered with the world-renowned Mayo Clinic to make HealthKit happen, and the Clinic was all praise for Apple’s new innovation in the health sphere. With HealthKit, your iPhone will keep a tab on your important health metrics on a daily basis, and over a longer period.

 The sources also point out that building a health-related service has been extremely difficult for Google as well as Apple, considering issue like data privacy. Google has  dabbled with the idea earlier, but its health portal called Google Health didn’t take off and had to shut down in 2012. It is still unclear if Google Fit will be featured in the next iteration of the Android or a standalone service. Google is expected to announce the service at the upcoming I/O event to be held on June 25- 26. At the I/O, Google has various sessions with the developers aimed at wearables such as “wearable computing with Google” and “designing for wearables”. It is highly speculated that the announcement could be made at one such session. The company has already partnered with several manufacturers like Motorola, LG and others, who will be building fitness-focussed Google smartwatches running the Android Wear OS.