It looks like Apple’s Tim Cook is almost ready to revolutionize digital health
You don’t need an Apple Watch to check your pulse to recognize that the Health+ service the company has been working on for years has gotten much, much closer to introduction. As we expected, the signs now point to a launch next year, with Apple’s Services VP, Eddy Cue, taking command of Apple’s health and fitness divisions.
This is consequential.
Changing of the guard
Work on this sector has hitherto been led by Apple COO, Jeff Williams, who is about to retire. Once widely regarded as the successor to Apple CEO, Tim Cook, the direct responsibilities Williams held are now being shared across other Apple executives, with Cue getting health.
A move to introduce a suite of health services – potentially called Health+ — has been on the cards for some time. Apple has spent billions on the sector, from developing health monitoring tools for Health, Apple Watch, and more recently AirPods pro to big investments in health promoting services such as Activity monitors, fitness, mindfulness and more.
These efforts are supplemented by innovations in health provision with Vision Pro and continued work to bring actual health records into the frame within the Health app. Apple is understood to have a huge team of health and wellness professionals who have been developing what will become the Health+ service.
What do we expect from Health+?
More of what we have already in terms of monitoring and management, with the addition of scientifically-based AI-derived medical care advice, fitness plans and more. In use, you’ll probably find your Apple Watch spots anomalies in your fitness levels to warn when prevention is required or if you are about to become sick.
“Our goal is to empower people to take charge of their own health journey,” said Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s vice president of health, in 2023.
What will it do?
I imagine it will provide you with:
- AI-based health and fitness advice and treatment monitoring plans.
- It will make use of medical histories when available,
- Apple’s own health algorithms will keep an eye on you and provide early warnings of conditions
- It will provide ongoing support for wellness, including mental health and fitness.
- It will also provide personalized health for better management of some conditions
- It may also have a built in service to help people live more independent lives
- All these features coupled with all the many health, wellness, and health promoting tools, services, etc that Apple already provides.
- They may also be accompanied by health industry-focused solutions for advanced patient care, such as those used at Emory Healthcare.
One more thing
If there is one more thing to think about concerning this story it’s this:
Apple CEO Tim Cook regularly insists that health will define Apple. 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.”
With speculation that Cook is considering retirement, is it not plausible to think that he hopes to make that announcement shortly after making his own health-focused contribution to put down a few more bricks along the road of positive change for the world?
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