Enabling Programmable Self with HealthVault

Chapter 6. The Last Mile: Releasing Applications to Users

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

—Mark Twain

Over the last few chapters we have gained an understanding of the HealthVault API (Chapter 3), learned about building a HealthVault web application with a focus on the HealthVault data types (Chapter 4), and built an engaging mobile application (Chapter 5). An application’s life cycle typically involves testing the application, releasing it to the user, and then monitoring it for anomalies, tasks that entail special requirements in a HealthVault context. This chapter will highlight best practices for releasing, maintaining, and marketing HealthVault applications to end users.

Testing Your Application

Well-written software goes through multiple test cycles, including both automated and manual tests. This section outlines some valuable test scenarios around HealthVault account management, API interfaces, and data types, which you should consider in addition to other tests.

HealthVault enables people to share and manage multiple health records. In Chapter 3, we covered account management and ways to configure record switching. You need to ensure your application works with a HealthVault account that has multiple records. The best way to achieve this is to create several test accounts with multiple health records and try your application with them.

Another important aspect of account management is sharing. You can test this by sharing a HealthVault record ...