Gary Wolf

October 2, 2014

We recently released our QS Access app, which allows you to see HealthKit data in tabular format. Not very many tools feed data into HealthKit yet, but Apple’s platform does pick up step data gathered by the iPhone itself. I have step data on HealthKit going back about two weeks. When Ernesto Ramirez and I were playing around with QS Access, loading the data into Excel and looking at some simple charts, I learned something: Even when I’m active, I’m sedentary.

My daily step totals ranged from a depressing 3334 steps on Thursday, September 18 to an inspiring 21,634 steps on Friday, September 25, but – as these charts clearly show – even  on the extreme days my activity was concentrated into relatively short periods when I got up from my desk and went out to do something. Most hours, every day, were spent with hardly any movement at all. I’m sitting at my desk, and sitting at my desk some more, and sitting at my desk still more. That’s probably not good. No, not good at all.

Pulling my data out of HealthKit and seeing a few simple charts gave me a bit of insight that I hope will lead to a change in how much I sit. It was a great to be able to easily make some simple analysis of my data. I hope you’ll find QS Access useful also (you can learn more about it here). Please share what you learn in the QS Access thread in the QS Forum or by emailing us about your projects: qsaccess@quantifiedself.com.