Users raise alarm bells after Samsung Health makes medical records accessible on the app

Samsung wants users to easily access their medical records. But at what cost?

Samsung Health is an application that helps users to track various aspects of their health. With the recent app update, users can now access their health records, manage medication, and track their food intake.

To make its app more insightful, Samsung has collaborated with companies specializing in health data integration, medication tracking, and food barcode scanning.

One of these companies is b.well Connected Health, a platform for healthcare organizations that unifies patient data systems.

With Samsung’s Health Records, users can access their medical records from clinics, hospitals, and health networks.

The feature would also include data about vaccinations and prescriptions, previous hospital visits, and some test results.

Health Records can also provide insights into one’s health, send alerts, and recommend next steps, such as going to the doctor and running some tests.

One of the main reasons for having all of this information in one place is to be able to access it more easily.

Among other Samsung Health updates are updated medications tracking and food intake monitoring.

With medications tracking, users can keep track of the medicine they have to take and find information on it, such as its description, side effects, warnings, and more.

The latest update allows more people to use the feature as it expands in South Korea and India. With this feature, users can add medication to their list by scanning the pill bottle and monitoring medication intake.

Samsung Health also has a food tracker, which now allows users to scan a barcode found on food packaging to check calories and nutritional information. The feature will be first available in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands. The list of countries should expand in the future.

The Samsung Health updates started a discussion online with people first being interested in how many of these features they will be able to access.

“Samsung Health now with even more region blocked features,” noted one Reddit user.

One of the main concerns was how safe it is to have personal information to be so easily accessible.

“Hope they lock down the app. That's a lot of personal data that is just out there to be hacked or erroneously shared without your knowledge,” shared one Redditor.

However, not all found this to be a major problem, stating that not much can be done with information such as one’s heart rate or blood pressure.

However, such statements were followed by a reminder that free apps aren’t free at all and often take advantage of users by collecting their data.

“There's no way in hell I'm letting a tech company have access to my EMR if they aren't directly involved in my healthcare. The app just asked me if I needed to talk about anything and encouraged me to tell it what was on my mind. Nope,” stated another Reddit user.