Apple to temporarily remove blood glucose measurements from the Health app

Apple to temporarily remove blood glucose measurements from the Health app

Apple is temporarily pulling the blood glucose measurement feature of its Health app, after it emerged the app was not compatible with standard measurements used in the UK and Australia.

While the company is working on the update, it will first disable this capability in the app and re-introduce it in the near future once the issue has been fixed. Meanwhile, all of the data users have entered will remain in place, sitting safely stored inside the HealthKit platform.

The problem is that blood glucose levels can be measured with two different units. In some countries, such as the United States, there’s mg/dL (milligrams per decilitre), while others such as the UK and Australia use mmol/L (millimoles per litre). Apple’s Health app doesn’t recognize this and an update is required.

All of the data users have entered thus far will remain in place, sitting safely stored inside the HealthKit platform.“To prevent confusion in countries where mmol/L is commonly used, we’ll soon release a software update that will temporarily remove the ability to manually enter and view blood glucose values in the Health app while we work on an update to support both units of measurement,” Apple said on its support pages.

“If you have previously entered values manually in the Health app, you’ll no longer see this data in the Health app after the update. However, your data won’t be deleted, and other apps with permission to read health data will still have access to blood glucose values that you previously entered.”

Meanwhile, third-party apps will continue to be able to support both units of measurement, and will be able to continue using HealthKit APIs to store blood glucose data.

[Via: CNet]