Apple's most important health news has nothing to do with fitness tracking

Apple's most important health news had nothing to with the major tech company getting into the world of fitness tracking. It had everything to do with a much-less noticed part of the announcement: Apple will partner with Epic Systems, the country's largest electronic health records company, a deal that has the potential to revolutionize how patients access their medical history.

An estimated 40 percent of Americans already have medical information digitally stored on an Epic Systems health record. And Apple's new HealthKit will integrate with those millions of patient records, the company announced. This kind of partnership is something that no other fitness apps have -- it's what could set HealthKit's other fitness tracking features apart from competitors like FitBit or Jawbone.

Here's how HealthKit could be different: by looping patients in with their providers through electronic health records, the app could hypothetically target people whose health is actually a problem, which is where real opportunity for improvement exists.

But there's a flip side: experts are already concerned by how much of the EHR market Epic controls. If Apple decides to keep its partnership with the company exclusive, health care providers could feel pressure from patients to adopt medical records that are iPhone-compatible.