APPLE'S NEXT BIG IDEA: PRIVATE HEALTHCARE
The focus on health continues as Apple launches a new
subsidiary company tasked with providing healthcare clinics to Apple employees,
AC Wellness.
Apple has
launched a new subsidiary company tasked with providing healthcare clinics to
Apple employees: AC Wellness.
Healthy living through technology
According to the AC Wellness website, the company is based at the Apple health
center in Cupertino, California, between its original headquarters at Infinite
Loop and Apple Park.
CNBC’s Christina Farr, who broke the news, claims the new
primary care clinics will launch in earnest this spring at locations in Santa
Clara County.
To support the attempt, Apple is recruiting doctors,
health coaches, nursing staff and “designers.” You can find ads on Glassdoor,
Indeed, and LinkedIn.
The company website states:
“AC Wellness
Network is an independent medical practice exclusively dedicated to delivering
compassionate, effective healthcare to the Apple employee and dependent
population at the Apple Wellness Centers in Santa Clara Valley, including the
new Apple Park Wellness Center. AC Wellness Network believes that having
trusting, accessible relationships with our patients, enabled by technology,
promotes high-quality care and a unique patient experience.”
For the
Apple people
Apple is starting small here.
The clinics will only cater for the health
needs of Apple employees and will be situated at several locations in the area,
including Apple Park, the report claims.
The idea makes sense — Apple will
already be coughing up significant fees to provide healthcare services for its
employees, so actually launching its own service makes sense — it can reduce
running costs while leveraging the offer for future health insights.
Apple is recruiting designers to help
develop healthcare programs in collaboration with its operations and technology
teams.
These moves mean Apple employees will
become the testing ground for what almost every Apple watcher now expects will
become a big sector for the company.
Patient records, activity data, software
and future health-related services can now be deployed and privately tested
against a huge population — Apple Park hosts at least 12,000 staff, and the
company has many more thousands across the area.
We know Apple is working on a plethora of
health-related solutions,
spanning non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, and a variety of research and
study attempts to identify and provide proof for ways in which technology can
make a difference to health.
Information
is power
Of course, as Apple continues to develop
new solutions around connected preventative healthcare, it can also begin to explore connected medical
intervention technologies.
To do so, it will answer those questions
currently drawing so much discussion
across the industry,
such as:
·
How
can data provide actionable insights to help deliver public health?
·
How
augmented reality (AR) and remote technologies can be used to provide better
healthcare to remote communities?
·
How
connected solutions can improve elderly care?
Healthy
outlook
Apple has been quite open about its
ambitions in health. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently told shareholders he thinks
his company can make a “significant contribution” in the sector.
That’s no idle claim.
As a company at the heart of the mobile
transformation, Apple is absolutely in a good position to figure out how to use
technology effectively for patient care. (We are seeing all the ideas I discussed in 2013come through, and more.)
The perfect storm of Apple’s mobile technologies and its capacity to work with large
sample groups (ResearchKit helps also) mean it is going to have a huge impact on future
health provision on a global scale.
Patient engagement and effective tools for remote diagnosis are entering the mainstream at this
time (even the NHS in the U.K. now offers some online diagnosis).
“Health is a huge issue around the world
and we think it’s ripe for simplicity and a new view,” Cook told a May 2016 conference in Amsterdam.
If I have questions, as a U.K. resident
who still enjoys NHS coverage, it is around the ethical application of these technologies:
Will Apple seek to reap the kind of profits so commonly seen by private
healthcare providers who ask the sick for credit card details before they look
at them, or will it instead decide to improve the lot of the poorest and most
disadvantages healthcare seekers in order to truly “leave a better world”?
Another question surrounds privacy: If Cellebrite can truly break into any iOS device,
just how secure will your patient data be? Is it appropriate that your
confidential health data be left unprotected?
I do expect Apple will eventually extend
its new healthcare subsidiary to people outside of Apple, possibly through
link-ups with insurance firms. I'm in no doubt at all now that the company
wants to be good for your health.
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