Enabling Programmable Self with HealthVault

Using Partner Applications

So far, we have looked at the mechanisms provided within HealthVault to track, update, and visualize health information. Outside applications, however, offer even more information. For instance, the Mayo Clinic Health Manager application (https://healthmanager.mayoclinic.com) can track your weight toward an intended goal (Figure 1-14).

Figure 1-14. Tracking weight against a goal

The Mayo Clinic Health Manager is able to access all the weight information from a user’s HealthVault account using the HealthVault API. If you’re not a programmer, you can benefit from many such applications that add value to HealthVault by allowing you to track and measure health data. If, however, you have modest programming skills in almost any modern language, this book will show how you can create your own.

The HealthVault .NET Web SDK provides an abstraction on HealthVault APIs to simplify working with the platform. Example 1-1 is a .NET program that uses the SDK to extract all the weights from a user’s HealthVault record into a dictionary.

Example 1-1. Accessing HealthVault through the .NET Web SDK to read weight measurements

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Web; using Microsoft.Health; using Microsoft.Health.Web; using Microsoft.Health.ItemTypes; using Microsoft.Health; public partial class HelloWorldPage : HealthServicePage { protected void Page_Load(object ...