Monitor your health and potentially spot problems early with Apple’s Health app for iPad
The Health app has been a staple of iOS since 2014 and, as of iPadOS 17, it’s now available on iPad too. The app works in much the same way on both devices, bringing a host of health-related data from various sources together in one place. The big difference is that you now have the option of viewing your health data and metrics in an app that’s been optimised for at-a-glance viewing on the iPad’s larger screen.
In either case, there are some major benefits to using the Health app. The main one is that it gives you a better picture of your overall well-being, both physically and mentally, allowing you to spot problems and seek help and advice from professionals if need be. You can also motivate yourself to improve your fitness and make vital changes to your lifestyle. And, by storing vital health information, you could potentially save your life in an emergency too.
Of course, logging such sensitive information can give rise to privacy concerns but don’t worry. Your data remains private and encrypted on your device and it’s only shared if you grant explicit permission. So let’s spend some time exploring the app and discovering what it can do.
How to get started with Health
It’s worth spending a bit of time becoming familiar with the Health app
Apple Health lets you store and track your data whether that be your activity levels, blood pressure, sleep, nutrition, or any one of many other examples. It pulls data from third-party apps and devices and enables you to enter you own information. You can then use a host of tools to make sense of your data with the aim of taking better care of yourself.
There are three key sections: Summary, Sharing and Browse. These make it easy to view your health highlights, involve others in your care and dive deeper into your metrics. Go to Browse and tap Activity, for example, and you can see how many calories you’ve burned and steps you’ve travelled. Select Nutrition and you can track your food intake.
With iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, there have been some notable additions. A Mental Wellbeing section lets you complete questionnaires about your state of mind and indicate current moods. You can also help improve your visual health by selecting Other Data in Browse and checking your Time In Daylight which helps reduce the risk of myopia.
One thing to note is that you can’t set up your Medical ID on the iPad version of the Health app - you can only do this on the iPhone version of the app.
Explained… The Health app
Scroll down the left-hand sidebar to access all the different parts of the Health app.
