Apple Has Plans to Eventually, Maybe Revolutionize Health Care
www.bloomberg.com
The company is working on big things, but employees disagree over whether they should be serving people who are healthy or sick.
  • yourchildrensuck@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Yup, soon you’ll need insurance to authorize purchasing Apple gear after they sell out to the health industry’s 3,000% markup.

  • traveler19395@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    If Apple can build glucose monitoring into their watch in the next 5 years I will switch my whole stock portfolio to AAPL, and buy two watches. But they won’t. That’s an incredible challenge.

    • yukeake@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      If, theoretically, they did get it working, and accurate enough for basic monitoring, it would be absolutely revolutionary. I could see insurance companies jumping on subsidies, rather than continuously shelling out every month for test strips (which are ridiculously expensive) or CGM pucks (which are also ridiculously expensive, but generally only covered for Type I, at least in my area).

      It’s an extremely difficult problem, though. A few companies have been working on the tech for at least the past decade, and we’re still not there yet.

      Once we are there, I definitely see some kind of legal challenge from the companies profiting fro the exorbitant price of strips.

    • rustbelt@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      You should but it now and when they do it in 10 years you’ll have all that growth smarty pants.

      • traveler19395@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Well I don’t believe they will do it first or have a monopoly on it. If they did it in the next 5 years, they would be first, and they would likely have the monopoly for the following 5-10 years. But it won’t happen, it’s too far away, both for Apple and the big pharm companies trying.

    • VulcanCafe@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      I am certain, for the standard model Apple Watch, that they’re going to provide blood glucose TREND data first. This will indicate pre-diabetes, etc. and require less accuracy than is required by someone who needs to take insulin. (There may be add on devices that connect to Apple Watch that do more).

      ​

      EDIT- this is exactly what the article says. SMH

  • im_not@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Off the top of my head, some things that I think would be really great for Apple to disrupt:

    • Industry reliance on Epic/MyChart. It’s not a terrible digital platform for health records, but it’s hit or miss on which practice uses it. And among those who do use it, not all of them are able to link their data about me with the MyChart data from another provider. It would be great if I could have one single Health account that syncs my primary care data, my dermatologist data, my cardiologist data, so everything’s always up to date. I’ve been able to sync some MyChart data to Apple’s Health app, but it’s hit or miss and doesn’t tell a complete health picture.
    • Insurance info. I feel pretty well informed when it comes to my health plan, my EOBs and billing. But sometimes I get so confused because I get bills in the mail after I pay online, or I pay through my Fidelity HSA but then have to square that payment with my Aetna account. It’s just a mess, and it’d be great if there could be a single source of truth for managing payments and seeing information about my deductible balance.
    • Prescriptions - I really like the prescription reminder feature in Apple’s Health app. Getting refills, alerts when pills are low, etc. could be really useful.
    • Hardware - And of course just general hardware improvements like blood pressure or blood glucose (holy grail, I know). I had to wear a big digital adhesive patch on my chest for two weeks to measure heart data following a recent heart issue, and it was really annoying and itchy. I guess any hardware improvements from Apple are always welcome.

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    I’m just a silly old patient with no clue what functional barriers or privacy-related barriers might prevent this, just my thoughts.