HealthKit Integration

[bjornorri]

I think it would be pretty nice to expose data fields from HealthKit to Home Assistant as sensors via the app. I'd be willing to put some time into it myself, if this indeed a wanted feature.

[david-pivonka]

Yes! It would be great to use it with smart scales for ex.

[robbiet480]

HealthKit integration is tough because we can only access the data when the phone is unlocked, so updates being pushed to sensors would be few and far between...

[robbiet480]

Not exactly HealthKit, but... Pedometer data is now in 2.0 via 47fed92. The data includes:

• startDate - The start time for the pedometer data.
• endDate - The end time for the pedometer data.
• numberOfSteps - The number of steps taken by the user.
• distance - The estimated distance (in meters) traveled by the user.
• averageActivePace - The average pace of the user, measured in seconds per meter.
• currentPace - The current pace of the user, measured in seconds per meter.
• currentCadence - The rate at which steps are taken, measured in steps per second.

[robbiet480]

Also, revisiting the specific request for HealthKit, since this was first requested Apple has published some documentation around getting approval for Health stating: In addition, your app must not access the HealthKit APIs unless the app is primarily designed to provide health or fitness services. Your app's role as a health and fitness service must be clear in both your marketing text and your user interface. so it's unlikely that the app would get approved anyway since it's primarily NOT designed to provide health or fitness services.

So i'm going to close this issue. Sorry y'all!

[lwestenberg]

For people who are looking for a solution to get Home Assistant sensor data to the iOS Health app: you can use Shortcuts on iOS with the render template task to get a value out of Home Assistant and use an Health app task to get the data in the iOS Health app. Only disadvantage is that you have to manually approve the execution on your phone or have to manually execute the shortcut.

Personally I would prefer to have all my data in Home Assistant but it won't work because iOS Health is too much integrated with the Apple Watch and I can't track my activities in Home Assistant (except for now reading some basic sensors like steps, stairs).

So: what if we would make a dedicated Home Assistant health app (also for watch) to track this data and store the data in Home Assistant and optionally sync it with the Health app.

[fivestones]

Only disadvantage is that you have to manually approve the execution on your phone or have to manually execute the shortcut.

You no longer have to manually approve the execution or manually execute the shortcut. You can now make shortcuts with the Shortcuts app that will run in the background at certain times or under certain conditions occur (e.g., you arrived at home, you opened a certain app) which will run without any manual approval. They do make a pop-up notification occur on the phone showing that they occurred, but they will occur without any personal interaction.

[fivestones]

what if we would make a dedicated Home Assistant health app (also for watch)

I'm all for this. I would really love to get at this data easily.

so it's unlikely that the app would get approved anyway since it's primarily NOT designed to provide health or fitness services.

There are many, many apps in the app store that access Apple Health data which are not primarily health or fitness apps--they are instead apps that are used to monitor info from your phone, a few of them being specifically to get that data off the phone and onto a server or computer elsewhere (including information such as phone location, gyroscope information, elevation, battery life, etc., so not primarily health apps, and not advertised primarily as health apps. Even the precursor to the Apple Shortcuts app, which was not made by apple, accessed Apple HealthKit data and was certainly not a health or fitness app.

[tensiondriven]

Second this, if the iOS HomeAssistant app could retrieve health data and display it in the app, I think there's a case to be made that this would qualify for the entitlements to retrieve health data.

[fivestones]

@robbiet480 Can we reopen this issue? I think it's clear now that the problem that lead you to close this is no longer an problem.

[zacwest]

I'll convert this to a feature request discussion, but keep in mind: the only way to know whether Apple would permit it is to build it and pray. That's sometimes worthwhile (it's the approach I did with the focus sensor, which we are using out of the norms) but it's also sometimes just a mentally draining exercise.

[zorrobyte]

There is a way to do this via a 3rd party app & node-red, I'm setting this up for myself now:
https://sixtymeters.com/automations/exporting-apple-health-data-to-home-assistant/

Also, check the comments; @wivaku provided some alternate scrips for data transformation.

I bet all one would need to do is write an app like Auto Export and submit it for Home Assistant if we wanted something "native". I also personally want to use the Emotibit (https://www.emotibit.com) and Crown EEG device (https://neurosity.co/tech-specs) and collect data.

I'm not sure if the author is around, but it could be worthwhile to convert the blog post into a wiki somewhere on the Home Assistant project so others can contribute code and collaborate on node red flows

[chezpaul]

I'm all for Healthkit integration with Home Assistant. Just putting my hand up in here.

[wivaku]

Health Auto Export will have native export to HA in the upcoming release.

[wivaku]

v6 is now available, with built in support for exporting Home Assistant entities.

https://www.healthyapps.dev/blog/export-apple-health-data-to-rest-apis-mqtt-brokers-and-home-assistant

[blackest]

It looks like it is practical to bring in a whole lot of data into HA via this export and a range of devices. e.g salter body analyser scales connects to its app by bluetooth and is an apple health source, my glucose meter uses nfc to collect meter data to it's app and is an apple health source, my id106 smart watch passes exercise data , heart rate ,stress, steps to the veryfit app and again shares it's data to apple health. it looks like we have a bridge available , it just needs HA to connect to it and store the data it gives us. https://sixtymeters.com/automations/exporting-apple-health-data-to-home-assistant/ shows it can be successful.

It really turns the iPhone into a useful tool, e.g since bluetooth has quite a limited range, you have to have HA on say a PI in range, i've seen a PI zero basically used as a collection agent to relay to the HA box located elsewhere which is totally not needed by using an iphone to pick up the data.