“Apple’s health team has hired an obstetrician, Dr. Christine Curry, to look into how the company can bolster its efforts in women’s health, among other projects, according to three people familiar with the hire,” Christina Farr reports for CNBC. “pple CEO Tim Cook has described health care as a growing priority and a major part of Apple’s legacy.”
“Apple has hired dozens of doctors to work across a variety of projects, including its so-called ‘AC Wellness clinics’ for Apple employees and its health-tracking Apple Watch. Curry has a particular interest in women’s health, but she’ll be working on various issues across the health teams, one of the people said,” Farr reports. “There’s been an explosion of health apps from third-party developers that are geared to women, such as apps for tracking fertility, connecting with a doctor and so on. But Apple could do even more when it comes to women’s health, both in hardware and software, in areas like pregnancy, fertility tracking and improving diversity in clinical research.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There is so much that is left to do in the health arena, from having universal, secure medical records that every one of a patient’s doctors can access to research that can yield amazing breakthroughs that Apple is uniquely positioned to deliver!
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. … We are democratizing it. We are taking what has been with the institutions and empowering the individual to manage their health. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, January 2019
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Apple’s next really big thing: Health – January 9, 2019
The downside, or the flip side IMHO is that it then becomes too easy to blame the patient for her/his own dang ill health. I’m in charge? I must have done a poor job of managing my healthcare. I’m at fault. I didn’t watch all the drug commercials on TV. I didn’t do all the reading required to stay on top of things. I didn’t understand all the medical mumbo jumbo. Seems to me it has to be a partnership.
“…it then becomes too easy to blame the patient for her/his own dang ill health.”
Entirely appropriate, in numerous cases. Think of all the people who:
– Still smoke
– Drink way too much
– Eat crap, all day every day
– Don’t exercise
– Text while driving
– Drink while driving
– Are enormously overweight
You don’t need to do “all the reading required to stay on top of things”. Don’t most people know the basics, at this point?
IMO, I see Apple’s healthcare initiatives as an effort to help individuals improve their overall health as well as increase their insight and knowledge regarding their health. Rather than just going in for a physical once per year, people will now be able to collect data that will aid in revealing health issues and trends before they become debilitating or life-threatening, such as heart monitoring. Best of all, from an individual perspective, this data will be collected for you with very little effort and at minimal cost (the cost of an Apple wearable).
Is there potential for this data to be misused? Certainly. That is true of all of the data that is collected about you on a daily basis. But the availability of this data also offers great opportunities to improve health in this country and to help avoid escalation of health issues into health crises.
We HAVE to take charge of our own healthcare. We need to begin by living a healthy lifestyle: eat right, exercise, and stop putting pollutants into our body (illegal drugs, smoking, etc). That will take care of a MAJORITY of our healthcare issues.
Then, we can begin to pay attention to our bodies and what they tell us. We can then intelligently manage our medical problems. We don’t have to know all the details, just know the basics and communicate that properly to your doctors, pharmacists, and other healthcare providers. If you don’t understand something, take time to ask. Most pros love to educate their patients, especially if they are trying to take care of themselves.
Too many just want a “pill for my ill”. Be responsible for your own health and your body.
I am a pharmacist and I see patients all the time who just dont’ seem to really give a flip about taking care of their body. I could go on and on but that would be depressing. Then I would need some Prozac®.