With iOS 15, Apple continues to improve the way you and your loved ones use your iPhones. We’ve already shown how you can get notified when someone isn’t at a location and how to notify someone when your location changes using Find My. The new version of iOS also brings changes to the native Health app, allowing users to share their medical records and alert someone about changes in their health condition.
In this post, we’ll help you understand and learn to share your health data with your friends, family, and doctor on your iPhone.
How does sharing work with the Health app on iOS 15?
With iOS 15, Apple allows users to share their medical data with their friends, family, and doctors via the Health app. This way, your loved ones can always keep track of your health changes and receive the same alerts as you. You get granular controls over what data is shared and you can choose from – activity, heart health, vitals, Medical ID, labs, cycle tracking, and more.
In addition to these shared data, the Health app will also relay important notifications you receive from your device onto someone else’s iPhone like a steep decline in activity, high heart rate, and irregular rhythm notifications. Similarly, you will also get alerts and health trends that others share with you via the Health app.
Besides sharing data with your loved ones, you also have the option to send your health data to your doctor/healthcare provider so that they know all of your medical records and access them easily.
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First things first, the ability to share health your data is an iOS 15-exclusive feature, meaning you can only share from an iPhone running iOS 15 with someone who uses an iPhone updated to iOS 15. You won’t be able to share your health records with others if:
- You haven’t updated your iPhone to the latest iOS 15 version
- The person you want to share your data with isn’t in your Contacts
- The person you want to share your health data with hasn’t upgraded to iOS 15 (they won’t show up when browsing through your Contacts)
As for whom you can share your health records with, any of your friends or family members who are saved in your Contacts list can be given access to your data. In addition to that, you can also share your medical records with your doctor or a healthcare provider so they have access to your file at any time. The ability to share your health with your doctor is currently limited to iPhone users residing in the US.
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Before you start sharing your health data with your loved ones, you need to make sure you and your friend’s iPhones are upgraded to iOS 15 and the person you share with in your contacts. Once that’s ensured, open the Health app on your iPhone and tap on the Sharing tab at the bottom of the screen.
Setting up Health Sharing
If this is the first time you’re setting up health sharing on your iPhone, select the ‘Share with Someone’ option.
In the ‘Share With’ screen that pops up, type the name of the person with whom you want to share your health data. When the person’s name shows up in the results, tap on it.
Once you select the person with whom you want to share data, you now have to choose between these two options on the next screen.
See Suggested Topic: Selecting this option will allow the Health app to select which data is shared with the other person based on the data you have available.
Set Up Manually: This will give you full access to what data is shared with someone via the Health app.
On the next screen, you’ll see toggles for immediate alerts you want to share with others. In the screenshot below, you can see ‘Walking Steadiness’ as one of the alerts suggested to you. You can enable it by tapping on its adjacent toggle until it turns green. If there are multiple toggles available for various alerts, you can enable them all by tapping on ‘Turn On All’ at the top of the first toggle.
Next, you’ll have to choose the topics you want to share with your friend or family member based on your activity, fitness, heart, nutrition, mobility, and mindfulness. If you chose ‘See Suggested Topic’ previously, you’ll see a limited number of topics to enable under the ‘Suggestions’ section. Here, you can either enable a topic by tapping on its adjacent toggle or select ‘Turn On All’ to enable all topics to be shared with your selected person.
If you had selected the ‘Set Up Manually’ option instead, you will be offered a more detailed list of topics to choose from different sections like Activity, Body Measurements, Cycle Tracking, Hearing, Heart, Mindfulness, Mobility, Nutrition, Other Data, Respiratory, Sleep, Symptoms, and Vitals. From here, you can either switch on the toggle adjacent to your preferred topic that’s visible on the screen or looks at all toggle inside a section by tapping on ‘See All’.
Once you’ve selected all the topics you want to share with this person, tap on ‘Next’ at the bottom.
You’ll now reach the ‘Invitation’ screen which will show you an overview of all the alerts and topics you selected to share with your friend. If you want to add/remove a topic from the ‘Health Alerts’ or ‘Health Topics’ sections, you can tap on ‘Edit’ and make your modifications.
You can tap on the ‘Preview’ button here to check what your health data may look like on the recipient’s iPhone.
When your preview loads up on the screen, it will look something like the screenshot down below. Once you’re done checking this review, tap on ‘Done’ at the top right corner to exit this screen.
After you’re done reviewing the topics you want to share, tap on the ‘Share’ button on the ‘Invitation’ screen.
You’ll now be shown that your invitation for sharing your health data has been sent to the other person. When you tap on ‘Done’ on this screen, you’ll be taken to the ‘Sharing’ screen inside the Health app.
Inside the ‘You Are Sharing With’ section, you should see the contact’s name with whom you have shared your health data and it’ll read “Invite Pending” until the recipient accepts your invite.
Related: iOS 15 Find My: How to Know When Someone Arrives at or Leaves From a Location
If you wish to share your medical data with more than one person, Apple lets you add more people to your sharing screen inside the Health app. For this, open the Health app, select the ‘Sharing’ tab at the bottom.
Inside the Sharing screen, tap on ‘Add another person’ under the ‘You Are Sharing With’ section.
You can now set up health sharing with this person in a similar way you did when setting it up.
If you’re already sharing your health data with someone using the Health app, you can modify what’s being shared with this person even after the initial setup. For this, open the Health app, select the ‘Sharing’ tab at the bottom.
Inside the Sharing screen, tap on the person’s name whose sharing privileges you want to edit from under the ‘You Are Sharing With’ section.
On the next screen, you can select/unselect the topics from the different activity and data sections. If you can’t see a topic you want to share from a category, tap on the ‘Show All Topics’ option underneath it.
Once you’ve made all changes to what data is shared, tap on ‘Done’.
Stop sharing your health data with someone
At any point, you can completely disable sharing your health data with someone in the Health app. To stop sharing your health data, open the Health app, select the ‘Sharing’ tab at the bottom.
On the Sharing screen, tap on the person’s name with whom you want to stop sharing data.
Scroll down on the next screen, tap on ‘Stop Sharing’.
In the prompt that appears, select the ‘Stop Sharing’ option.
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When someone you know shares their medical data with you via the Health app, you will receive an immediate notification about an invite regarding that on your Notification Center. You can tap on this notification to open it on the Health app.
In case you didn’t get a notification about someone’s invite, you can open the Health app, select the ‘Sharing’ tab at the bottom and check for any new update inside the ‘Sharing With You’ section on this screen. If there’s someone who wants to share their health data with you, tap on the ‘View’ button under their name.
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Accept an invite
You will now see an invitation from this person telling you that this person has chosen to share their medical data with you along with the topics that have been chosen for selection.
To view the shared data, tap on the ‘Accept’ button at the bottom.
On the next screen, you’ll be asked whether or not you want to be notified about health alerts from this person. Tap on ‘Turn On’ to enable health-related notifications.
You will now be shown the “Invitation Accepted” message on your screen. Tap on ‘Done’ to quit this screen.
Check someone’s health data
To look at the health data shared by this person, tap on the person’s name from within the ‘Sharing With You’ section.
On the next screen, you’ll see all the health data someone has shared with you along with options to message, call, FaceTime, and known contact info.
Modify notifications from someone
You can choose what notifications you receive from someone in the Health app. For this, open Health, go to Sharing > person’s name and tap on ‘Options’ at the top right corner.
On the next screen, tap on the toggle adjacent to the topics (Alerts, Trends, and Updates) you want to disable.
Stop receiving health data
If you wish to disable getting shared data from someone inside the Health app, open Health, go to Sharing > person’s name, and tap on ‘Options’ at the top right corner.
To disable health data from this person, tap on ‘Stop Receiving Health Data’.
In the prompt that appears on the screen, select the ‘Stop Receiving Data’ option to confirm the process.
In a supported region like the US, open the Health app, select the ‘Sharing’ tab at the bottom. On this screen, select the ‘Share with your doctor’ option.
On the next screen, select your healthcare provider from the list of suggested names or search for one from the text box above.
This will open the ‘Connect to Account’ screen where you can log in to the patient web portal using a username and password. Next, choose a topic to share with your doctor and then tap on ‘Next’. Once you see a preview of your selected health data, tap on the ‘Share’ button.
That’s all you need to know about sharing your health data with others in the Health on iOS 15.
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