How Will This Affect M-Health Apps?

Apple's brand image suffered a setback last week when celebrities' nude photos were hacked and shared from celebrities who use iPhones. (Why would they take and save nude photos???). There is still a big debate raging about whether their iCloud accounts were hacked or their mobile devices were hacked. It's probable that the experienced hackers guessed their passwords. One suggestion is that there was a security hole in the two-step verification iCloud Control Panel used on Windows. 

The timing of this news is particularly damaging since Apple is expected to be launching a series of health and fitness apps along with its iWatch and new iPhone devices next week. 

This has me thinking a lot about how and where customers want to track and access health and fitness data. The "quantified self" movement is already very strong and many of its devotees use Apple devices and social media to monitor their weight, blood pressure, work outs,  brag about the progress they've made, and seek support from like-minded friends, family, and peers. 

Healthcare systems are busily installing electronic medical records and rolling out patient portals. In his talk to our community in July, e-Patient Dave pointed out that already we the patients/consumers/healthcare customers have more and better information about our current health and fitness than our care givers have. We can monitor our EKGs and blood pressure in real time. We can check our own blood sugar levels and store that info on our iPads, and then share anomalies with our doctors, if we want to. 

Rumour has it that, due to the iCloud security breach kerfluffle, Apple is telling app developers that they won't approve apps that store personal data in the iCloud. That defeats the purpose, it seems to me, of letting customers conveniently synch that info across their devices and be able to share the info they want to with trusted care-givers.