Posted by Brenda Shaw, Health & Home Partner Engineering Technical Writer
Health Connect is Android’s on-device platform designed to simplify connectivity between health and fitness apps, allowing developers to build richer experiences with secure, centralized data. Today, we’re thrilled to announce three major updates that empower you to create more intelligent, connected, and nuanced applications: the stable release of the Health Connect Jetpack library 1.1.0 and the expanded device type support.
Health Connect Jetpack Library 1.1.0 is Now Stable
We are excited to announce that the Health Connect Jetpack library has reached its 1.1.0 stable release. This milestone provides you with the confidence and reliability needed to build production-ready health and fitness experiences at scale.
Since its inception, Health Connect has grown into a robust platform supporting over 50 different data types across activity, sleep, nutrition, medical records, and body measurements. The journey to this stable release has been marked by significant advancements driven by developer feedback. Throughout the alpha and beta phases, we introduced critical features like background reads for continuous data monitoring, historical data sync to provide users with a comprehensive long-term view of their health, and support for critical new data types like Personal Health records, Exercise Routes, Training Plans, and Skin Temperature. This stable release encapsulates all of these enhancements, offering a powerful and dependable foundation for your applications.
Expanded Device Type Support
Accurate data representation is key to building trust and delivering precise insights. To that end, we have significantly expanded the list of supported device types in Health Connect. This will be available in 1.2.0-alpha02. When data is written to the platform, specifying the source device is crucial metadata that helps data readers understand its context and quality.
The newly supported device types include:
Consumer Medical Device: For over-the-counter medical hardware like Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs) and Blood Pressure Cuffs.
Glasses: For smart glasses and other head-mounted optical devices.
Hearables: For earbuds, headphones, and hearing aids with sensing capabilities.
Fitness Machine: For stationary equipment like treadmills and indoor cycles, as well as outdoor equipment like bicycles.
This expansion ensures data is represented more accurately, allowing you to build more nuanced experiences based on the specific hardware used to record it.
What's Next?
We encourage all developers to upgrade to the stable 1.1.0 Health Connect Jetpack library to take full advantage of these new features and improvements.
Learn more in the official documentation and release notes.
Provide feedback and report issues on our public issue tracker.
We are committed to the continued growth of the Health Connect platform. We can’t wait to see the incredible experiences you build!