Welcome to the Google Health API!
This new API leverages Google OAuth, providing a more secure, user-friendly, and scalable solution for accessing and managing health data. Here are some of the benefits:
Enhanced Security: The new API aligns with Google's current security recommendations and best practices for API design and implementation, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities.
Consistency: The new API follows modern API design principles, offering a more consistent and intuitive developer experience.
Future-proofing
- Scalability: The new API is designed to scale to meet future demands, supporting a growing number of users and data types.
- Maintainability: Adopting a standardized approach makes it easier to maintain and update apps, reducing technical debt.
- Access to new features: Migrating to the new API provides access to new features and functionalities as they are released, ensuring apps stay current and benefit from the latest advancements.
- Compliance: The new API is kept up-to-date with the latest Google security and privacy standards, reducing the effort required to keep apps compliant.
- Data privacy: The Google OAuth system is designed to comply with various data privacy regulations (for example, GDPR and HIPAA), simplifying the compliance burden on developers.
How to start?
Before you start developing, see our Developer Checklist, which provides a list of steps to help you launch your integration with the Google Health API.
How you get started also depends on the type of developer you are.
New developer
If you have no experience with Google APIs or Google Cloud, or need a refresher, the easiest and fastest way to get started is by going through the codelab. It will show you how to set up a Google Cloud project, an OAuth 2.0 web client, and how to use Visual Studio Code to make your first successful call to the Google Health API.
Fitbit developer
If you are an existing Fitbit Web API developer, you might want to read the migration guide first. It highlights all the differences between the Fitbit Web API and the Google Health API and should provide the guidance you need to start planning your migration.
This guide also highlights best practices and UI samples to assist with guiding your users through the re-authentication process.
After that, either do the codelab, or verify that your Google Cloud setup is complete, before you start development with one of our data type guides.
Read the Migration Guide Complete the Google Cloud setup
Choose a protocol
The Google Health API supports both REST and RPC protocols to provide developers with a scalable and high-performance foundation for health data integration.
REST
REST is an API design approach based on standard web concepts and human-readable formats like JSON. It is particularly well-suited for building public APIs and web applications because it is browser-friendly and widely supported. Its primary strength lies in its simplicity and accessibility for external developers.
gRPC
RPC is a high-performance system that uses a compact binary format known as Protocol Buffers to facilitate machine-to-machine communication. It is ideal for internal microservices, mobile-to-backend communication, and real-time updates due to its efficiency and support for advanced features like streaming. RPC is the preferred choice for high-performance scenarios or when strict interface contracts are required.
For more information, see gRPC vs REST: Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them in API design.
Resources
Beyond getting started, this site features comprehensive resources to assist with development and migration.
- Support: Need assistance? Get access to community forums and our public Issue Tracker on the Support page.
- Google Health API Parity Tool: Use this tool to compare endpoints and functionality between the Fitbit Web API and the Google Health API. It also features a context file you can use directly with an LLM, or as part of an Agents.md file in your preferred AI tool.
- API reference: Complete REST reference documentation.