Apple is betting big on the $7 trillion healthcare space, with its own devices the key

“Apple’s HomePod may not be in every Apple user’s home — but its Health app is on every iPhone and Apple Watch,” Lauren Barack writes for GearBrain. “Sure, you can delete the app. But standard to iOS Health are features many check on during their day, a go-to for how many steps they’ve walked, the hours they’ve slept and increasingly for vaccination records, or a latest electro cardiogram, also known as an ECG.”
“Increasing the data its consumers can retrieve through the Health app is a big focus for Apple. The latest deal with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is a prime example, a partnership that lets the country’s 9 million veterans gain access to their medical records through Apple’s Health app,” Barack writes. “The agreement with one of the biggest medical systems in the U.S. is hardly Apple’s first. That started in March 2018 when Apple announced new deals with 39 U.S. hospitals all on one day. Health Records, a feature inside the Health app, started carrying data from medical facilities including Johns Hopkins, Cedars-Sinai, Stanford Medicine and more.”
There is “more than $7 trillion spent in healthcare every year… That’s the size of the market that CB Insights estimates healthcare brings in, ‘already almost 10% of the global GDP,’ it stated in a 2019 research brief,” Barack writes. “Apple’s deal with the VA today, could be a possible deal with Medicare tomorrow. All told, the government provided coverage for 36.5 percent of the U.S. population in 2014 or about 115.4 million people, according to a 2016 report from the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO. And that’s potentially a lot of new Apple Watches and iPhones.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Looking for growth? A $7+ trillion market is en excellent place to explore!
Apple Watch Series 4 (GPS + Cellular) in Stainless Steel Case with White Sport Band (40mm left, 44mm right)On the healthcare, in particular, and sort of your wellbeing, this is an area that 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. Because our business has always been about enriching people’s lives. And as we’ve gotten into healthcare more and more through the Watch and through other things that we’ve created with ResearchKit and CareKit and putting your medical records on the iPhone, this is a huge deal. And it’s something that is very important for people. We are democratizing it. We are taking what has been with the institutions and empowering the individual to manage their health. And we’re just at the front end of this. But I do think, looking back, in the future, you will answer that question, Apple’s most-important contribution to mankind has been in health. — Tim Cook, January 8, 2019
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