Apple’s digital doctor won’t see you now

I’ve been excited for the potential of Apple’s much heralded smart digital doctor ever since Apple CEO began evangelizing the company’s contribution to health.

Sadly, it seems Apple has put its plans for a virtual health coach on ice following recent leadership changes. 

Word is that Apple’s SVP Services, Eddy Cue, didn’t think what Apple had come up with was competitive enough to challenge health tracking services from the likes of Oura and Whoop. He also seems to want to make changes to Apple’s Fitness+ service, a Bloomberg report said.

What we hoped for

What we thought was coming this year was Health+, an AI-augmented advisor designed to track and monitor your health data to make recommendations for better self-care.

The system would know when we got sick, recognise the signs of an incoming illness, monitor for common health problems, and help people optimise self-care. See it as a doctor in your pocket.

This service would have used data from Apple Watch and external medical information.

What we’ll get

Apple isn’t going to waste the development investments it has already made in these systems. Gurman claims some features will be introduced within the existing Health app. 

That means health-related videos, personalized suggestions and tools to monitor gait. 

It also means Siri will be able to answer health-related questions, supplementing general information with analysis of the health data Apple’s devices pick up about you.

These are somewhat less ambitious outcomes than we had been expecting following years of speculation concerning its plans for health.

What may be in the way

Though the challenge in play here may yet turn out to concern privacy, tight regulation around digital medicine, and a sense that this stuff should not happen until the tech can be 110% right. You can’t mess with people’s health, nor do you want to run the risk of misdiagnosis, particularly when it comes to an insurance claim.

That’s certainly part of what Cue felt, according to the report, reacting to the high standards and levels of scrutiny in the sector.

All the same, it still feels slightly disappointing, given the years of quiet enthusiasm we’ve had from the company. 

When is the future now?

Back in 2019, Cook told us: “I believe, if you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, ‘What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?’ it will be about health.”

Even as recently as 2023, Apple’s VP health, Sumbul Desai was saying, “Our goal is to empower people to take charge of their own health journey.”

What’s being speculated upon now comes close to that, of course, but still falls short of the kind of AI-driven features we had hoped to see. Which means, unless Apple has another idea in mind, Apple’s doctor won’t see you now. 

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