Note: At the time of this post Apple has acknowledged issues with HealthKit have delayed numerous third-party health apps.
One of the big announcements out of WWDC 2014 was the iOS 8 Health app and the entire HealthKit framework. The framework is designed to allow third-party app and hardware vendors feed activity and health data into the Health app, which can then -- at some undetermined future time -- be used to communicate that information to your health care providers. Well, iOS 8 is available and the Health app is too, but there's not a lot you can actually do with it right now. Let's take a quick look at the app and how you can use it today.
Health has four buttons at the bottom of the screen that demarcate the functionality of the app. First is Dashboard, which will be the repository for information on weight, activity, standing time, stairs climbed, and whatever else can be tracked by your fitness monitor or Apple Watch. The Dashboard is going to be awfully lonely until third parties actually get to add data to the Health Data repository, the second button on the app.
One look at Health Data shows you all of the areas that are currently under consideration for storage on your iPhone -- body measurements (fat percentage, BMI, height, lean body mass, weight), fitness (active calories, cycling distance, flights climbed, NikeFuel, resting calories, steps, walking + running distance), "me" (birthdate, biological sex, and blood type), nutrition (biotin, caffeine, calcium, carbohydrates, chloride, chromium, copper, dietary calories, dietary cholesterol, fiber, folate... this list goes on forever), lab results (everything from Blood Alchohol Content to Peripheral Perfusion Index), sleep (interesting, since it's unknown if the Apple Watch is usable as a sleep monitor), and the ever-popular vital signs (blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, and respiratory rate).
Once you've entered data into any one of those hundreds of categories, you can view the numbers for the day, week, month or year.