How to export Apple Health data as a document to share

Apple’s Health app helps you gather valuable insights into your personal health, actionable data that should help you, or a medical pro, take better care of you. But there’s a problem we can solve while we wait for Apple Watch.

Export a no-no

One of my readers asked me to look into this; I’m sorry to say that it’s a challenge to export Health app data in a useful format. In this report, I’ll explain how it should work, talk about why it should work, share a few opinions and tell you the best solution for exporting your data.

In the future, I expect integration between Health and patient records will improve. The Mayo Clinic is developing an app called Patient that will let you keep your physician informed about your progress or challenges.

Also read: The easy way to use Apple’s iOS 8 Health app

It is possible the facility to export Health data has been kept limited because:

• Apple must work through international regulatory and/or data protection limitations governing use of health information.
• Medical authorities worldwide must figure out how to make efficient and interoperable Electronic Health Records. There are multiple standards, few of them good.
• Apple is on a mission to ensure user privacy. What business does anyone in your government outside of your chosen medical professionals have in seeing your medical records? How does this make us safe from terrorism?

That’s the complex environment solutions like Apple’s must navigate right now.

Why export?

Here are just four situations in which you may wish to export the data gathered by Health app:

• To share with a medical professional
• To share with an insurance firm in the event of a claim
• To use as court evidence
• To share with friends

[NB: I think combining Health app with Game Center will be a big step, making a game of health and making Game Center useful, at last.]

What we can do now

Apple has sort of made it possible to export Health data:

• Open Health, select Health Data from the lower menu
• Select “All” (it is not possible to export only one data set)
• In the next screen tap the icon at the top right
• The Export Health Data item pops up
• Hit Export and the app will create a .Zip file containing XML data you can email.

If it succeeds, the process takes an age.

Problems

When exporting data, the operation frequently fails. The process seems to require significant processing power, why else is it so buggy?

No multitasking, if your device enters lock screen mode the process will fail. Before exporting open Settings>General>Auto-Lock. Set to Never. Now return to Health app and attempt data export.

I’ve noticed Health app frequently crashes when you attempt to export, otherwise the process takes a significant time.

The biggest flaw is once you have your data there is no easy way to make anything useful from it. Apple exports the data as a pair of XML files. Open them and you see gibberish.

There’s an app for that

Unless you happen to be a database demon, there’s no easy way to create useful data from these files. This Apple discussions post offers some ideas, (in Excel), but it is not at all straightforward and requires you install Mac and/or Excel compatible Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) drivers, as often seen in Big Data implementations.

Fortunately, every problem is an opportunity, and developers at Quantified Self have created QS Access, an app that lets you access your HealthKit data in a table you can explore in Excel or Numbers.

This free app is at present the best way to export and analyze the data Health collects. Install the app, give it the permissions it needs, select the data you want to export and it will gather the results and present them in a CSV spreadsheet you can share.

I’m pleased to have found the app, as it makes it easy for me to show how many miles I’ve walked since discovering Apple’s step counter.

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