“Apple Inc’s healthcare technology is spreading quickly among major U.S. hospitals, showing early promise as a way for doctors to monitor patients remotely and lower costs,” Christina Farr reports for Reuters. “Fourteen of 23 top hospitals contacted by Reuters said they have rolled out a pilot program of Apple’s HealthKit service – which acts as a repository for patient-generated health information like blood pressure, weight or heart rate – or are in talks to do so. The pilots aim to help physicians monitor patients with such chronic conditions as diabetes and hypertension. Apple rivals Google Inc. and Samsung Electronics, which have released similar services, are only just starting to reach out to hospitals and other medical partners.”
“Those trying out Apple’s service included at least eight of the 17 hospitals on one list ranking the best hospitals, the U.S. News & World Report’s Honor Roll,” Farr reports. “Google and Samsung had started discussions with just a few of these hospitals.”
MacDailyNews Take: Who – outside of mental patients, perhaps – would trust a South Korean chaebol, with no record of anything but a pattern of intellectual property theft and patent infringement or Google – of all outfits! – with their personal medical and health information? Please see related articles below.
“Apple has recruited informal industry advisors, including Rana and John Halamka, chief information officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, to discuss health data privacy and for introductions to the industry,” Farr reports. “The company said it had an ‘incredible team’ of experts in health and fitness and was talking to medical institutions, healthcare and industry experts on ways to deliver its services.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: All aboard Apple’s HealthKit Express or risk being hopelessly left behind!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Arline M.” and “David E.” for the heads up.]
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There’s practically no iOS malware, thanks to Apple’s smart control over app distribution – June 13, 2014
F-Secure: Android accounted for 99% of new mobile malware in Q1 2014 – April 30, 2014
Google’s Sundar Pichai: Android not designed to be safe; if I wrote malware, I’d target Android, too – February 27, 2014
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U.S. DHS, FBI warn of malware threats to Android mobile devices – August 27, 2013
I weigh myself every morning upon waking and before eating or drinking anything. My Withings scale uploads to my iPhone.
I don’t consider it obsessive. But I do like pulling up the app every couple of weeks to see weight and body fat trends.
If I could simple track other metrics I would like to do that too.
Again, not so I could obsess over the data, but so I could look to see trends occasionally.
Reason to sell more iPads.
Patients could be given Watches too
Hmm.
Wall Street says Apple has just about peaked and has no way of increasing revenue enough to matter. If Apple could take just a third of that $3 trillion business it would easily increase revenue enough to take them over the trillion dollar market cap level. For a hardware designing company Apple has a huge opportunity to create health devices of all sorts. Eventually people could carry all their health information on their mobile devices.
All the doctors and clinics in my health insurance group use H-P based EPIC System devices, so if Apple works with EPIC they would eventually be able to transfer all my health information in their database to my mobile device in an instant. Or vice-versa if I’m wearing a data collection device. It sounds quite promising for Apple and for individuals needing health care.
In Canada where everyone has equal access to medical treatment, the largest number of users are people who don’t work: elderly and unemployed. It would make sense to us an Android solution for them because they rarely have the wherewithal to buy a decent phone or pay to use it.
In the USA, the largest number of users are the rich who can afford health care. The poor are kept at the gates of the shoddy health morass. It will be the working rich who will buy iPhones and Apple Watches and make use of Apple HealthKit.