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Google could launch a health data service at I/O this month

Google could launch a health data service at I/O this month

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Google and personal health data have a rocky past. That includes a unified medical record service called Google Health that the company shut down less than four years after its launch. Now, with a rise of wearable devices — including upcoming ones running Android Wear — Google wants to offer a way to collect and organize the activity data. That's according to Forbes, which says Google will unveil a new service called Google Fit at its annual developer conference, which begins June 25th. There, the company is expected to go over more details on Android Wear, which it unveiled back in March, and will be headed to a number of new smartwatches from Motorola, Samsung, LG, and others. But it will also announce a new set of APIs for developers to share activity information from wearable devices, Forbes adds.

Google wouldn't be the first

If that's the case, Google will be just one of many giant technology companies vying to control the infrastructure for personal activity data. Samsung last month announced SAMI, a cloud-based platform for securely capturing and processing data from all various health tracking hardware. And just last week, Apple announced HealthKit, a backend for tracking fitness data which will work hand-in-hand with a health-tracking app on iOS. Both of those efforts will hook up to third-party hardware, though in Apple's case, HealthKit is expected to be an integral part of the company's wearable device, which is reportedly being announced this October.

Google has already telegraphed early plans to help track personal health data, but not for wearables. In January, its X team announced plans for a "smart" contact lens that can measure glucose levels for diabetics using embedded sensors connected to wireless transmitters. Like this rumored Fit project, the contact lens effort relies heavily on partners who would be the ones actually making the tracking hardware.