Every person gets one health story, and one private Family Stork email address every clinic already knows how to use. CommonHealth takes a different approach: it connects directly to hospital FHIR APIs on Android devices. Both solve the same problem — your health records scattered across providers — but they collect records in fundamentally different ways.
| CommonHealth | Family Stork | |
|---|---|---|
| How records arrive | FHIR API sync from participating hospitals | Clinics email visit summaries to a private address |
| Covers every clinic? | Only hospitals with enabled FHIR endpoints | Any clinic that sends email |
| Platform | Android only | Any device (web-based) |
| Data storage | On-device only (never in the cloud) | Cloud-based (accessible from any device) |
| Family accounts | Individual focus | Whole family — children, adults, aging parents |
| Paper records | SMART Health Cards (digital) | Snap a photo — AI does the data entry |
| AI features | Not specified | Ask the record questions in natural language |
| Cost | Free | Free to organize; $99/year for automatic filing |
| Built by | The Commons Project (public benefit) | TruePrimAI, Inc. |
CommonHealth is a free, open-source Android app created by The Commons Project, a nonprofit focused on digital public infrastructure. It was initially known for SMART Health Cards (digital COVID vaccination records) and has expanded into a broader personal health data management tool.
CommonHealth connects to hospital systems using FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) — the standardized protocol that lets apps pull records directly from electronic health record systems. When your hospital supports FHIR and has an active API endpoint, CommonHealth can import your clinical data: lab results, medications, immunizations, conditions, and visit records.
The privacy model: CommonHealth stores all data on your Android device, never in the cloud. You choose exactly which apps and organizations can access your data. This is a strong privacy position — your records never leave your phone unless you share them.
CommonHealth shines in a specific scenario: you're an Android user, your primary providers are large hospital systems with active FHIR APIs, and you want to aggregate your own clinical data on a device you fully control. The on-device storage model means zero cloud exposure, and the FHIR connection automates the data import without manual entry.
For individuals managing their own health data from FHIR-connected hospitals, CommonHealth is a thoughtful, privacy-first tool.
FHIR coverage is real but uneven. The 21st Century Cures Act requires hospitals to offer patient-facing APIs, but "offer" and "work reliably for consumer apps" are different things. Smaller practices, independent labs, urgent-care clinics, school health offices, and out-of-network specialists often don't have FHIR endpoints that consumer apps can connect to.
For families — especially parents managing children's records across multiple providers — the gaps add up:
CommonHealth pulls from the hospitals that support FHIR. The rest of the record stays wherever it was — in a portal you forgot the password to, in a drawer, or in the clinic's system.
Family Stork doesn't use FHIR APIs. Instead, each person in your family gets a private email address (shown on their record at @families.familystork.com). You give this address to every provider — the pediatrician, the specialist, the lab, the school nurse. After each visit, the clinic emails the visit summary to that address. It lands on the person's timeline and files itself.
The key difference: FHIR requires the hospital to have an enabled API. Email requires the clinic to have email — which is all of them. The mechanic works with any provider, any EHR system, any size practice.
For families managing records for multiple people, each family member gets their own address and their own timeline in one account. A parent tracking a baby's first year, their own annual checkups, and an aging parent's cardiologist visits has everything in one place without switching apps, portals, or devices.
CommonHealth's on-device model is a genuine privacy advantage: your data never leaves your phone. For individuals who want zero cloud exposure, that matters.
The tradeoff: on-device storage means the record lives on one phone. If the phone is lost, broken, or reset, the data needs to be re-imported from the hospital APIs (assuming those connections still work). The record isn't accessible from a laptop, a second phone, or by a family member managing care from a different device.
Family Stork's cloud model means the record is accessible from any device and sharable with family members — your partner can see the baby's vaccine history, your sibling can view your parent's medication list. The privacy model is different: data is stored securely in the cloud rather than on-device. For families who need shared access, cloud wins. For individuals who prioritize zero-cloud privacy, CommonHealth's approach wins.
CommonHealth is designed as an individual health data tool. It handles one person's records on one device. For a parent managing records for three children and an aging parent, that's five separate setups on five phones (or the children don't have their own phones, and you can't set up their CommonHealth accounts).
Family Stork is built for exactly this case. One account. One timeline per family member. Each person's email address routes clinic summaries to their own record. A parent managing a newborn, a toddler, and a grandparent's care has everything in one view — and the records keep arriving whether you remember to check an app or not.
No. As of October 2026, CommonHealth is Android-only (available on the Google Play Store). iPhone users who want FHIR-based record aggregation can use Apple Health, which connects to participating hospital APIs natively. Family Stork works on any device — it's web-based, so the platform doesn't matter.
It depends on whether the pediatrician's EHR system has an active FHIR API endpoint that CommonHealth can connect to. Large hospital-affiliated practices are more likely to support FHIR connections. Small independent practices often don't. Check directly with the office. With Family Stork, you give the pediatrician your child's private email address — any office that sends email can use it, regardless of their EHR system. Ask your pediatrician for guidance on your child's specific health needs.
Yes. They solve different parts of the problem. CommonHealth pulls structured clinical data from FHIR-connected hospitals on your Android phone. Family Stork receives visit summaries from any clinic by email and builds a family-wide timeline. Using both gives you FHIR data from connected hospitals and email-based records from everywhere else — on the same timeline in Family Stork.
CommonHealth is free. It's a public benefit project by The Commons Project. Family Stork is free to organize records; $99/year (about $10/month) covers automatic filing — clinics email records, and they file themselves on the timeline.
CommonHealth stores all data on your Android device — nothing in the cloud. Your data only leaves the device when you explicitly share it. Family Stork stores records securely in the cloud so the whole family can access them from any device. Both approaches have privacy tradeoffs; the right choice depends on whether you need shared family access or prefer zero-cloud storage. For medical emergencies, call 911.
Tired of managing health records for yourself and everyone you love? Family Stork organizes them for you automatically. $99/year, or about $10/month.
Start organizing — free