Compare apps for storing, finding and sharing family medical records

The short answer

No single app is best for every family. The right choice depends on where your relatives' records come from, who needs to see them, and what you need to take with you if you ever leave the app. This guide compares two widely used options, Guava and the Health app's health records feature on iPhone, and covers storing, finding, sharing and exporting family records. It does not cover medical advice or interpreting the records.

• Guava fits households that collect mixed paperwork: patient portal imports, PDFs, CCDA files (a standard electronic summary format many providers can produce), and photos or scans of paper letters. It can share selected information with someone else through a time-limited link or a printable PDF report.
• Apple Health Records fits iPhone users whose doctors and hospitals support automatic record downloads. You sign in to the patient portal from the Health app, and the records then download on their own. It can share selected health topics with chosen contacts.
• Neither app documents an export that hands you a complete folder of every original file. Check this before you rely on either one as your only family archive.

Who does what

Three parties are involved, and each has different responsibilities. The person receiving care owns the information and, if they are an adult who can decide, chooses who may see it. The family coordinator sets up the app, gathers documents and manages sharing on that person's behalf. Healthcare providers create and hold the official records. They decide which records they release through their portals and what proxy or caregiver access they allow. An app can organize the copies you receive, but it does not change what a provider keeps or how it grants access. Before you connect a relative's portal, ask the provider how caregiver or proxy access works and what authorization it requires.

How Guava and Apple Health Records compare

Criterion	Guava	Apple Health Records (iPhone)
Getting records in	Imports from patient portals, PDFs and CCDA files, plus photo and scan capture of paper documents	Automatic downloads from participating organizations after you sign in to their patient portal; availability varies by country or region and by organization
Finding records	Ask the vendor how scanned and imported documents are searched	Browse by category, data type or the organization that supplied the record
Sharing with family	Selected data through time-limited links, or printable and PDF reports	Selected topics shared with chosen contacts; you can review or stop sharing later
Sharing with other apps	Ask the vendor	Third-party apps can be given read access to selected categories, for current records only or for current and future records; read permission can be withdrawn
Export	CSV export covers manually logged entries, not every imported file; a full data download can be requested by email	XML export of health and fitness data; this is not a folder of PDFs
Multiple caregivers	Premium plan includes unlimited profile managers	Ask whether your arrangement needs separate accounts or devices
Cost	Free plan and paid Premium plan; Premium has been listed at $78 per year or $8 per month, and a discounted family plan is mentioned without published terms	No pricing facts covered here; check device and storage needs
Privacy and deletion	Account and data deletion in settings; the policy names service processors and the circumstances in which authorized staff may access data; states it does not sell data; describes AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS in transit	Sharing, iCloud storage and deletion are controlled separately; removing Health does not by itself revoke existing sharing; providers may keep information you shared with them

Guava's encryption and access-control descriptions are the company's own statements, not results of an independent audit. Use them as a starting point for questions, not as proof that one app is more secure than another.

When Guava is the better fit

• Records come from many sources, including paper letters, discharge papers and PDFs that do not arrive through a portal.
• Several relatives help manage one person's information, and you want more than one profile manager.
• You often hand a summary to someone who does not use your app, such as a new specialist's office or a respite caregiver. A time-limited link or a printed report handles this.
• Your household uses a mix of phone types and you need to confirm that everyone can open what is shared.

When Apple Health Records is the better fit

• The person receiving care, or the coordinator managing their records, uses an iPhone.
• Their providers support record downloads in your region, so lab results and visit records arrive without manual uploads.
• You want fine control over what other apps can read, including whether that access covers future records.
• Sharing selected topics with a trusted contact is enough, and you do not need to send full documents to outside recipients.

Settings that are easy to misjudge

In the Health app, deleting data or removing the app does not automatically stop existing sharing. Review and stop sharing separately, especially when a caregiving arrangement changes. Information already shared with a provider may stay in that provider's records either way. In Guava, a CSV export is not a complete copy of the account. It contains the entries you typed in yourself, not the imported medical files. If you want everything, use the full-download request or keep your original files elsewhere.

A decision workflow for your household

• 1. List the essentials before you look at features. For example: whose records, which providers, which file types, who needs access, and what you need to be able to export.
• 2. Mark each requirement as must-have or nice-to-have. Note which phones and computers each caregiver uses.
• 3. Compare your must-haves against each app's documented capabilities in the table above. Mark anything not documented as unverified rather than assuming it works.
• 4. Ask the vendor about each unverified must-have. Also confirm whether your relative's specific providers support portal connections or downloads.
• 5. Read the current plan, billing and account terms at checkout, including whether a family plan or extra profiles change the cost.
• 6. Ask each provider how caregiver or proxy portal access works. Get the care recipient's agreement where they are able to give it.
• 7. Before you load real records, and only if the account holder agrees, try retrieval, sharing and export with a made-up document that contains no personal information. Write down what actually happened, not what you expected.
• 8. Choose the app, decide who manages each profile, and set a date to review who has sharing access.

A comparison sheet you can copy

Requirement            | Priority | Devices/OS | Record or file type | Guava (documented?) | Apple (documented?) | Open question | Result after check
Capture paper letters  |          |            |                     |                     |                     |               |
Search and retrieval   |          |            |                     |                     |                     |               |
Recipient access       |          |            |                     |                     |                     |               |
Revoking sharing       |          |            |                     |                     |                     |               |
Export contents/format |          |            |                     |                     |                     |               |
Profile managers       |          |            |                     |                     |                     |               |
Separate adult accounts|          |            |                     |                     |                     |               |
Price and billing      |          |            |                     |                     |                     |               |
Privacy and deletion   |          |            |                     |                     |                     |               |

Hypothetical example

This is an illustrative case, not a real family. A household needs three things: searchable scans of specialist letters, separate profiles for two adult parents, and an export that a sibling can open on a different computer. Treat each as its own requirement. Guava's photo and scan capture covers getting the letters in, but ask how the scans are searched. Its CSV export covers only manually logged entries, so ask whether the full-data download includes the original attachments. For Apple, the XML export answers only what its documentation describes. Confirm that the sibling can actually use the file before you count the export requirement as met. Mark a requirement satisfied only once you have a confirmed answer.

Keep a backup outside any app

Neither app documents an export that rebuilds your full set of original documents. Keep the PDFs and scans you collect in a separate, organized folder as well, named by person, provider and date. A change of app, account or caregiver then won't leave the family without its paperwork.