Your smartphone is a powerful and flexible tool for capturing information related to your Health. There are various ways that your phone can do this, such as popular Apps or devices described below. Some apps span multiple categories, allowing the user several avenues for capturing health information.
Manually Enter the Information
This is the most primitive way to track your health information, whether it’s your blood pressure, weight, blood sugar, energy level, or medication list.
You can use your phone’s native apps (e.g. Notes on iPhone) or a cloud storage service like Dropbox or Google Drive. Evernote can be used to store just about any type of information, but it’s also integrated with health sensor devices (see below).
Tracking diet and exercise is easy with the MyFitnessPal and SparkPeople apps. (Like many other popular diet and exercise apps, they also offer other ways to track your information, such as nutrition barcode scanning and linkage with activity tracking devices.)
Capture Information With the Phone’s Sensors
The sensors built in to your phone can automatically capture selected types of health information when they are linked to suitable apps. Thus, the apps take advantage of the phone’s stock hardware to deliver specialized health-related functions.
A popular example is tracking physical activity. Numerous apps (e.g. RunKeeper) use the phone’s GPS to track outdoor activities like running, walking, or walking.
A handful of apps (e.g. Zombie, Run!) also harness the accelerometer to track indoor activities like treadmill running, which would be impossible to measure with the GPS.
Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock uses the accelerometer, with the phone placed under your mattress, to monitor the depth of your sleep. The manufacturer claims that the app wakes you up within a 30-minute window of a light sleep phase.
However, the quality and depth of sleep do not always correlate with movement, especially for people with sleep disorders.
The camera is another useful sensor. Azumio’s Instant Heart Rate app measures your heart rate when you place your fingertip over the camera lens. It works by sensing slight changes in the color of your fingertip which occur with each heartbeat. A few apps use the camera lens to estimate the oxygen saturation (concentration) in your blood, but they tend to be poorly rated in app stores, with users noting that the readings aren’t accurate when compared to dedicated oxygen saturation sensors.
As mentioned above, many nutrition apps use the camera to scan food labels and import the calories and nutrient content into your food log. This is quick and painless way to track food, as long as they have the labels.
For more health-related tips please visit www.healthpick.in
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