Apple Health Duplicate Records

This article pertains to: Legacy API (V1) Inform (v2)

What causes duplicate sleep or workout records in Apple Health?

Apple’s data model for sleep and workouts is built in a way to accommodate data sources - such as the Apple Watch, Apple Health app, or 3rd party connections - that capture and sync data in several different formats. Some sources capture only summary level information about the sleep or workout event such duration, heart rate (usually min, max, and/or average), etc. Sources that report these summaries represent their data similarly to the Validic Workouts and Sleep data models.

Other sources capture more granular information, often times at intervals during the event. Sources like this have a variety of methods they use to transmit data to Apple Health. Inconsistency is, therefore, possible and neither Apple Health or Validic have control over when and how 3rd party sources report their data in Apple Health. Some sources record a starting event and then update that event record as time elapses during the event. Others create multiple records, like micro records, that would need to be summarized to give a full picture of the actual event. The latter approach can cause records that appear to be duplicates in Apple Health. It can also result in a large number of records syncing for a single sleep or workout event.

It is recommended that users sync data directly from their source app, such as Strava or Garmin Connect directly rather than via Apple Health, as this not only ensures that the data is quickly received but also ensures that the data is reported as intended by the original source. If the user is syncing an app that is not directly supported by Validic today, the Validic Inform data model provides source information so that you can decide whether you want to use that information or filter it out. Additionally, new sources are added to the Validic Inform platform throughout the year and we would love to hear about popular sources that your users are using. You can reach out to the Validic Customer Support team to let us know about sources that you’re interested in connecting to.