Current Applications and their problems
The main use of my mobile phone apps is to track my health condition, so tidying up just what apps are best to support that is important.
The key application should be the phone's own one, Samsung Health. But of cause Google's Health app is also active and needed by the NHS App's to get movement data. Why can't we have just one app coordinating everything is my major complaint. On top of these two are several other apps addressing more targeted areas. HealthForYou is key to getting information from my monitoring devices into the phone, and while the Samsung app can get the data from the blood pressure monitor, that path is distorted since it duplicates all 120 readings everytime it downloaded. The other devices, oxygen level, temperature and weight have to be manually copied to the other apps, but again, the Samsung App only provides tracking of weight anyway. The NHS Apps could be more coordinated, with three separate 'home' one's and another two third party one's.
The main NHS app tracks my medication and some of my test results, but not all, and advising about appointments is somewhat hit and miss, with the last hospital appointment not even being listed. We then have Weight Loss and Active 10, both of which stand alone but to my mind should be more integrated. Neither is essential as both duplicate tracking that Samsung Health does anyway, and in the key elements does a better job anyway is a bit 'American' in it's alternative. PhysiApp has been added to the mix to ostensibly to track my physiotherapy plan, but with most elements not even activated by my physio nurse it is little more than just a very poor demonstration of the 7 exercises I'm scheduled to undertake daily until April. It should be web based, but the only way to tag each days actions is to hit the 'Quick Complete' button in the phone app. *I* would like it to be recording at least WHEN I did these exercises each day and how long they took.
One other app that has probably already been sidelined is the GloryFit one which linkes to the Smart Watch that I have. That has a number of problems which to date have outstripped the advantages. Yes it monitors all of my 'steps', where the phone is not in my pocket all of the time, and it gives some of the sleep information, but I don't trust what it does report as it misses that I have been up during the night. If the Samsung App could access it's data then it might be worth keeping it on my wrist but the rash it's been causing is just another negative. Should I be looking for an alternative? Probably, but not ones that cost hundreds of pounds, there is little reason to spend money I don't have!
So where next? Tracking my health problems will develop into a specification on just what I am trying to track and pick up where each of the above fit's in.