Apple Health or Sam: what do you need?

No. Sam reads from Apple HealthKit alongside Apple Health, which stays the system-level health store on iOS. Sam adds what sits on top: the condition program, the questionnaire, the symptom diary, the documents in the Health Vault and the monthly report.

Apple Health has its own medication reminders, a PDF of your current medication list and symptom logging. Sam keeps your medications in one list next to your diary and adds, for each of eight conditions, a program with its own diary, the Apple Health values that fit the condition and a monthly questionnaire, plus room for lab results and doctor's letters in the Health Vault and a doctor report as a PDF for your appointment.

Both keep a medication list on the iPhone and remind you at the times you set. Apple Health, per Apple's support page (checked 10 October 2026), supports weekday and cycle schedules, as-needed medications, logging from the notification and a PDF of your current list. Sam keeps one list per person with daily times, a schedule every few weeks or months, or as-needed doses and puts it next to your symptom diary and in the doctor report of your program. You can keep Apple Health for the Watch values and use Sam for the diary.

On iOS 26 or later, yes. Sam offers it when you answer Yes to "Do you take any medication?" during setup, and later in Medications. In Apple's sheet you choose which medications to share. Those medications stay in Apple Health: reminders and logging run there, and Sam shows them and their doses next to your list. Sam sends no reminders for them. You can assign one to a program, and it then shows among that program's medications, but it never appears in the program's doctor report or among the medications and doses that Friends & Family shares. Apple Health stays where it is. More on the medication reminder page. How the import works is covered in Apple Health Medications in Sam.

Apple states that drug interaction checks in its Medications feature are available only in the United States. Sam has no interaction check. Your doctor or pharmacist can answer questions about interactions.

Sam Chat answers questions about your own Apple Health data and the documents you have stored, by finding and summarising what is already there. What a result means for your health is for your doctor to say.

No. Sam is an iPhone app that reads Apple Health. An Apple Watch works, and so do Oura, Garmin and Whoop when their app saves data to Apple Health. Sam shows what your device records there and compares it with your own baseline.

No, and that is the main thing separating it from most of this category. There are no readiness scores to optimise. Sam is for people living with a condition, and the output it is built around is the record in the doctor report you take to your next appointment.

No. Sam is a wellness companion, not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease and does not replace your doctor's care. It is not a DiGA, so it cannot be prescribed or reimbursed by statutory health insurance.