Apple’s digital health news hints potential future invention

In its latest report, Apple has confirmed the critical pillars around which its digital health initiatives are built, and these reflect what most of the industry has coalesced around at this stage of connected everything: informing users to help them make better decisions and secure data aggregation to enable better health solutions.

What’s that coming over the mountain?

Apple doesn’t talk too much about remote patient monitoring, or rather, it does, but isn’t talking (yet) about how these technologies will drive more sophisticated approaches to patient care. What it does discuss is how its technologies are assisting in research and supporting current patient care, and it also speaks to the sharing of data with healthcare practioners.

And again, reading between the lines (as I tend to do), what Apple does tell us about its plans for health should be seen as a desideratum spelling out what is to come. Apple will and shall continue to explore this space, and as opportunities to either bring new health tech to market or (I think more likely) to create systems to support third-party health innovations(Robot surgeons? 24/7 patient monitoring? Better support for remote medical diagnosis? – all of these can be construed with what the company already does.

‘Nothing matters more’

Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer said: “We believe passionately that technology can play a role in improving health outcomes and encouraging people to live a healthier day.”

[Also read: The essential guide to Heart Rate Variability on Apple Watch]

But what’s more interesting is his statement that,

“Our vision for the future is to continue to create science-based technology that equips people with even more information and acts as an intelligent guardian for their health, so they’re no longer passengers on their own health journey. Instead, we want people to be firmly in the driver’s seat with meaningful, actionable insights.”

“We intend to stay on this path, because nothing matters more,” he added.

This isn’t just an Apple argument, but an industry direction we’ve seen emerging across the last few years as ideas around digital health entered the everyday world.

Health researchers and governments everywhere have come to recognize that some of the biggest challenges, such as heart problems and diabetes, can be mitigated by giving people the information they need to track and change their own health habits.

Turning data into reality with augmented health

That data can also be exploited by third party apps such as Calm or Qardio to deliver more optimized and personalized data and services, sometimes in conjunction with additional hardware accessories.

Apple’s work on Electronic Health Records also opened new frontiers in patient care, giving physicians deep (and sometimes remote) access to key data concerning patient health. Health Records is now available to patients at over 800 institutions across over 12,000 locations,

But the potential for digital health doesn’t stop at exhorting an Apple Watch user to go for a jog.

The data gathered by these devices can provide colossally useful insights to health research teams eager to test and develop new solutions, and Apple is encouraging such sue too, with APIs and solutions such as ResearchKit and CareKit. The latter have supported a host of studies, including, but not confined, to the Apple Women’s Health Study, the Apple Heart and Movement Study, and the Apple Hearing Study.

Privacy is healthy, too

Apple says its system can now store 150 different types of health data that is encrypted so that only users, not Apple, can access it.

The report also sees Apple take a little time to explain the need for patient health to be kept private and secure. “Every user should have the option to choose who they share their data with and what they share.”

That statement may well become a testing ground for privacy, particularly in the U.S. following the recent Supreme Court decision and the damage it seems to be doing to female emancipation. Apple’s systems do, after all, capture information around women’s health, so maintaining a wall of privacy around such data now seems more relevant than ever before.

Apple believes the strongest health innovations are possible only through direct collaboration with the medical community, and the report describes four categories of this collaboration:

• Building tools to enable researchers to make new scientific discoveries,
• Helping strengthen the physician-patient relationship with meaningful data,
• Collaborating with health organizations to promote healthy lifestyles at large scale, and
• Supporting public health and government initiatives.

Is there a doctor.., on your wrist?

The company says research has shown that connecting patients with their care teams remotely results in better outcomes, citing the Corrie Health app, UVA Health care at home programs, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs as evidence. Care teams are better able to help patients with chronic conditions at Ochsner Health System and NHS Sunderland, and remote monitoring is reducing the cost and length of stays in the neonatal intensive care units at Odense University Hospital and the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital.

Health organizations and companies around the world, including insurers, have integrated Apple Watch into their schemes.

Apple says they have successfully increased participants’ physical activity levels, helped them develop regular sleep patterns, and fostered other positive changes. And, of course, Apple gets regular letters from people whose heart problems have been identified by the watch.

What next though?

If I’m honest, the report is pretty light on that kind of detail (and why would Apple tell us anyway).

All the same, the way I see it is that what it does say should help reveal the strength and extent of the ecosystem Apple has already managed to build, which means the next steps the company can take can be built to capitalize on that existing work.

With that in mind, Apple is clearly just a few sensors more from delivering near complete insight into personal physical and mental health, and the sky for better self and patient care really is the limit once the company achieves that. And Apple intends to stay on that path until it reaches that destination.

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