Is Apple Going Into Healthcare? - A 2021 Update

“I do think there will be a day when people looking back will say Apple’s greatest contribution to the world was healthcare.” This quote might catch some people off guard right now; after all, the company with the iconic logo is best known for its consumer techs like iPhones and Macs. But the quote comes from the company’s own CEO, Tim Cook, talking about Apple's healthcare plans during the Time 100 Summit in 2019.

This article is a supplement to the content of our e-book, Tech Giants in Healthcare. It's also the second entry to our new series that provides a snapshot of what a given tech giant is working on its way to disrupt healthcare. We first looked at the recent healthcare developments around Amazon which indicate the company’s bet on remote care and an aim to overhaul the pharmaceutical industry.?

For its part, Apple entered the healthcare market later than its competitors but is working on acquiring a significant share of the market. Are the recent developments indicative of Tim Cook’s statement? Let’s see the steps that the company is taking to reach that vision.

The Apple Watch phenomenon

According to Statista, Apple holds the largest share of the global smartwatch shipment market. In the first quarter of 2020, that accounted for a substantial 47.9% share of the market. The company has been heavily leveraging the popularity of its smartwatch for its healthcare plans.

Source: https://www.apple.com/

It previously received FDA clearance for the ECG function of its smartwatch and has been working steadily on validating its efficacy in a number of studies. In February 2021, Mount Sinai researchers shared that their app and the Apple Watch’s heart rate variability (HRV) monitor could help spot new COVID-19 cases before a molecular diagnosis.

The results of another study conducted by Stanford University researchers was published in March. They found that the cardiac metrics that the Apple Watch monitors are as good as clinical tests. Their findings suggest that the Apple Watch could thus be adequate for remote monitoring of elderly patients with cardiovascular disease.

With the massive adoption of the smartwatch, Apple seems to use the opportunity to turn patients into the point-of-care through the device.

Healthcare? There’s an app for that!

Apple’s Health app aims to bridge patients and doctors, and all the data in-between. In early June, new features were announced for the app that further hammered in this aim. It already gathers health data from a user’s iPhone, Apple Watch and other apps to make them accessible in one place. Now users in the U. S. can choose to share which types of data, such as sleep activity and heart rate, from those that they want to share with their doctor for specific insights.

Source: https://www.apple.com/

Perhaps the biggest feature update is the integration with some electronic medical record (EMR) systems in the U.S. Users can share their health data collected by the Health app directly to EMRs. Cerner, the second-largest EMR system provider in the U.S., supports this new sharing feature. Seamlessly sharing patient healthcare data from an Apple device to an EMR and viewable by a doctor or caregiver represents a major step in facilitating digital health approaches.

Healthcare designed by Apple

Mid-June 2021, we got more details about Apple’s healthcare plans. It turns out that the tech giant does not plan to limit itself to smartwatches and apps; but also wants to provide a full-blown primary-care medical service of its own. The news came from an exclusive report by the Wall Street Journal that had access to insider contacts and documents.

Their medical service would be fully run by Apple with Apple-employed doctors working at Apple-owned clinics. To test this bold plan, the WSJ says the company took over employee health clinics near its headquarters that were previously run by a startup. It built a team of clinicians, engineers and product designers to test out its new health services in those clinics.

While the effort is ongoing and is at a preliminary stage according to the report, this would signify a radical move by a tech giant. And Apple has the resources to make such a move.

Learning the ropes

Apple’s healthcare plans are surely ambitious but the steps it has taken show that the company is a newcomer to the field and is still learning the ropes of the industry.?

For one, the aforementioned WSJ report also notes that people familiar with the project say that it “hasn’t gotten off the ground”; and that Apple has struggled to move it past the preliminary stage. The integrity of health data from Apple’s clinics to support product development has reportedly been an issue raised internally by some employees. The company has to ensure data privacy if it wants to directly handle sensitive patient data in its own clinics.

Last September, when Apple released the Apple Watch 6, it included a blood oxygen saturation sensor. A drop in the oxygen saturation (SpO2) level that the sensor measures can indicate an underlying respiratory illness; even if no visible signs are present. However, they did not seek FDA clearance for this feature even if they did seek it for the ECG function. In a sense, they give the impression that ECG is a serious medical tool; while measuring blood oxygen levels is just for fun.?

If Apple plans to make its wearable a point-of-care device, it might as well go the extra mile to validate its health sensors. This will prevent patients getting anxious about abnormal readings.

Source: www.dannymekic.com

A seamless future for fitness tracking

Apple’s more ambitious medical service project might have stalled for now but its general healthcare plans are still ongoing. In the short term, we can expect it to focus on wearables as the company steadily marches towards its grander healthcare plans.

Apple’s director of product marketing, Deidre Caldbeck, hinted that not only the Apple Watch; as the AirPods might integrate health tracking features in the future. “If you think about the health features we have today, there are obviously several in Apple Watch and iPhone,” Caldbeck said in an interview. “There’s also some health features with AirPods and some of our audio products. So, there’s absolutely an opportunity to leverage the ubiquity of our devices to discover new ways that we can empower people to better manage their health.”

So we can expect the tech giant to find ways to integrate more health features in its line of products. In the process, they might test out features like the SpO2 monitor to see if there is interest among users “just for fun” or otherwise. But Apple is definitely working on providing healthcare for their own employees, and maybe later, to their customers too.?

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Dr. Bertalan Mesko, PhD is?The Medical Futurist?and Director of?The Medical Futurist Institute?analyzing how science fiction technologies can become reality in medicine and healthcare. As a geek physician with a PhD in genomics, he is a keynote speaker and an Amazon Top 100 author.

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