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03 August 2023
Health Connect is an Android API that gives users a simpler way to consolidate and share their health and fitness data across applications. With Health Connect, users can opt to share their health and fitness metrics between their favorite apps. And for developers, Health Connect helps streamline workflows and reduce API complexities.
By using Health Connect, Peloton, ŌURA, and Lifesum were able to provide their users more information about their health by bridging the gap between the specific types of health metrics available on each application. Together, these metrics can provide a clearer, more holistic view of users’ health. And thanks to Health Connect’s intuitive APIs, implementing these changes has become easier than ever. Rather than having to build multiple API integrations to support access to multiple datasets, Health Connect saved engineers time by only requiring one.
The Peloton team received numerous requests from its Members asking for integrations with other platforms. Because of this, Peloton engineers saw an opportunity to give them a more holistic view of their wellness information by supporting easier access to the data they track across each of their health and fitness apps. But the Peloton team was concerned by the time and cost that developing individual API connections for each app would require.
“We would have to coordinate road maps, marketing, and support, and it isn’t feasible to do these things for every service we’d like to work with,” said Eder Bastos, a senior Android engineer at Peloton. “By integrating Health Connect, we don’t need to do any additional implementation work to support other services.”
Maintaining a single Health Connect API integration to share data with other health and fitness apps saves Peloton developers time and effort. When updates are made to the Health Connect API, the Peloton team can adopt those changes and receive all the benefits at once, rather than maintaining multiple APIs for each potential partner’s platform.
Roughly 20% of Peloton’s new Members now use Health Connect. Health Connect also increased Member engagement in the Peloton App, driving a 10% increase in Members using Peloton to log their workouts over time when the Health Connect API was enabled.
Health Connect provided the ŌURA team a seamless way to synergize user information across health and fitness applications. By giving their members access to the data they track where they need it, they’re able to monitor their health in the ways that work best for them—including syncing data from other health apps like Peloton.
For instance, when an ŌURA member takes a Peloton strength class, they can choose whether to share their data with the Health Connect API in their permission settings. If they opt to share the data, ŌURA can then read it from Peloton and show the member a full view of their fitness journey in the ŌURA application—and make personalized suggestions for their future workouts.
ŌURA not only reads exercise data but can also write sleep data from the ŌURA Ring. When connected to its signature wearable, the ŌURA app can track sleep stages, duration, heart rate, and heart rate variability. With a member’s permission, ŌURA can then share this data with other apps integrated into their member’s Health Connect ecosystem.
“Integrating Health Connect was a smooth experience, thanks to its good documentation," said Alex Earll, a senior backend engineer at ŌURA. “Some developers might not have the resources to directly integrate with ŌURA’s API, so we offered Health Connect as a turnkey solution to fit their product.”
Thanks to Health Connect, the ŌURA team nearly doubled the number of Android users importing workouts. The number of weekly workouts imported from Android has also increased by 95% since ŌURA integrated Health Connect last November.
ŌURA engineers are actively planning to use the Health Connect API to read and write additional data so people get an even more comprehensive image of their health. That includes movement data like active calories burned, step counts, and workout duration.
Holistic wellness is dependent on more than a person's diet, which is why the nutrition app Lifesum enabled its users to import their sleep data via Health Connect. With this integration, users can sync external sleep data with the Lifesum app. This helps them better understand the correlation between how they eat and sleep and provides a more holistic view of their health.
With Health Connect, Lifesum users can easily import their sleep data from ŌURA and other data, like exercise and steps, from other apps within the Health Connect ecosystem. Then, Lifesum’s new feature, Sleep X Nutrition, can provide insights into how dietary choices impact sleep and vice versa.
Combining the power of two fields—ŌURA, an expert in sleep, and Lifesum, an expert in nutrition—allowed both platforms to create a richer, more insightful user experience around health.
“Mediating a relationship with ŌURA through Health Connect lets Lifesum users track more information about their sleep, such as duration and quality," said Kajsa Ernestam, a product manager at Lifesum. “It also helps Lifesum provide personalized sleep insights and actionable feedback to improve users’ eating habits and reach their goals.”
By integrating Health Connect with its new Sleep X Nutrition feature, Lifesum cut its development time by an estimated 75%. Additionally, Lifesum increased organic installations by 3X during the promotional period of the new Sleep X Nutrition feature in the Play Store.
Today, there are over 50 apps integrated with Health Connect, and that number continues to grow. As new apps join the Health Connect ecosystem, each app directly benefits from a greater variation of health data that they can read and write to.
Health Connect is coming to Android 14 this fall. This will make it even easier for users who opt in to control how their health and fitness data are shared across apps.
“We’re really excited to see more seamless integration of Health Connect into Android 14,” said Eder from Peloton. “Downloading a separate app can be too much overhead for some people, so we’re excited to see even more Health Connect usage as it becomes easier to access.”
Streamline integrations with other health and fitness apps while providing your users with deeper health insights using Health Connect.
Get started by viewing Android’s Introduction to Health Connect. Then head over to the Health Connect Codelab to learn how you can integrate the Health Connect API with your app today.
Android Developers
Google Play
