Apple’s affinity towards healthcare traces its way long back. Previously, it has introduced health monitoring features, including heart rate monitoring, fall detection, and ECG via its devices. But this time, Apple has gone beyond and has come up with the idea of setting up in-house medical services. The primary reason behind the setting up of an in-house medical service is to offer medical services to its user by employing doctors.
The Wall Street Journal, along with the news of setting up an in-house medical facility, also confirms that Apple is on its way to incorporating healthcare facilities via Apple Watches. It is needless to say that this initiative by Apple could be a milestone in the history of healthcare service. Although Apple previously launched a similar vision project to check on the health of its employees in 2016, the project failed before it could seek attention.
According to the COO of Apple, Jeff Williams, the pivotal motive behind this project is to rupture the traditional way of monitoring health. It is not new that patients tend to visit medical practitioners only when they face health-related issues. Apple aims to offer a health service that would enable users to benefit from virtual and in-person medical guidance from doctors employed by the company. The ability of the Apple Watch and iPhone to monitor health would be used as the initial step in gathering health-related information from users.
As confirmed by a report, Apple has set its way to give wings to its future endeavor. As a trial for the project, Apple has been using its employee health clinic near Apple Park. However, the project could secure a place as it was being criticised to a large extent by the company’s own employees. The employers found fault on the ground that the data collected by Apple devices lack coherence and in many cases were inaccurate.
The Wall Street Journal has recently cited a portion of an internal meeting organized by Apple.:
“Employees concerned about the culture pointed to a 2019 meeting during which a midlevel manager raised questions about data, according to people familiar with the meeting and the documents. Dr. Desai responded angrily, leading some present to conclude that critical questions were unwelcome, according to the people and the documents. The manager left Apple weeks later and the episode contributed to her departure, documents show.
Apple’s spokesman said Dr. Desai spoke to the importance of data integrity in the meeting. “This matter was investigated thoroughly and the allegations could not be substantiated,” the spokesman said. Apple declined to comment on the circumstances of the employee’s departure. “
Although the scheme gathered huge criticism, it is essential to celebrate the fact that so far Apple’s contribution to healthcare is worth praise. Apart from monitoring heart rates, Apple devices through the HealthKit database can accumulate health and fitness metrics. These collected data, later, can be accessed by users through the Health app on iPhone and Apple Watch as a piece of primary information on their health.
In addition to these, Apple, at WWDC, has unveiled a new ‘Walking steadiness’ measurement app. Moreover, Apple has now features that could be used to directly transfer health data to partnered doctors. This mesmerizing App is made available in iOS 15 and is designed in such a way that it could monitor a user’s change in heath dynamics over a period of time.
