app development and users health vault accounts

Question

I am a newcomer to health vault as a platform and am considering using it for a personal fitness mobile/web app to store securely my users fitness measurements.

However, my users will probably not have a health vault account. 

So what is the solution in that case:

1. can the mobile app create an account automatically for them?
2. can I have a single health vault account for the app and add new users to it at will?
3. or do they have to leave my app, create a new health vault account, and come back to my app?

Which of the three solutions are valid?

What do other app developers do?

If only solution 3 above is available then it would be a deal breaker for me as my app would include casual users who are not familiar with health vault. However I am keen to use health vault for its reassurance and security point of view. 

Is there a guide somewhere for app developers on this kind of scenario?

Thank you for your help. 

Chris from Ireland

 

Answer 1

Hi,

The vast majority of applications that connect to HealthVault don't require or expect users to already have a HealthVault account, or to be familiar with HealthVault. When the application redirects a user to HealthVault, the user can sign-in if they already have an account, or sign-up if they don't. In both of these cases, the user has to authorize the application to access their health record. Whether it's a new HealthVault user or an existing HealthVault user that's authorizing the application, the end result is the same; the user either accepts or rejects the authorization request. If accepted, the app is able to access the user's record without requiring the user to sign-in to HealthVault going forward.

It sounds like you're building a mobile app. Users don't have to "leave" your app, as in #3 above. Rather you can open a browser session within the application context, redirect the user to HealthVault to handle sign-in/sign-up + authorization, and we'll redirect the user back to the mobile application when this is done. To the user, this all happens in the context of your application. The sign-up process for new users typically takes less than a minute. This option wil work very well for the scenario you described above, and many applications use the same method to connect to HealthVault users.

It's not possible for applications to provision HealthVault accounts on user's behalf.

Hope that helps!

Ali