Update: It’s 2 years into the Apple Watch now. Research Kit has been collecting data and an update is expected soon. It’s interesting to read this from the perspective of today…. and know that Tim Cook is dedicated to more deeply going into medicine with apps. I’m sure something surprising is coming – Tim Cook loves to surprise us! Watch the med arena carefully. Here’s a recent post on Tim and health and Apple: Apple, The Future and Medicine
The iWatch will be a watch that watches you. It measures all the bodily data points the current med arena thinks you should have. Maybe it should be called iMed or ICU. Tim Cook has been doing more than yakking with Carl Icahn. But he was very smart to do the recent buyback. The iWatch/iMed/ICU is going to be a powerhouse and the stock price will reflect it. The buyback was the right thing.
Everyone knows to look at the recent hires and Tim Cook has everyone from biosensor people to sleep studies researcher. (Please dear Apple gods, cure my insomnia.) Collecting all sorts of data about your body, connecting to your iPhone, apps that coordinate. It will be its own ecosystem.
Yes, it will be huge. I read the posts calling for Apple’s funeral. With jabs at TC for doing nothing but meeting with Carl and not able to fit Steve’s shoes. Oh, so not true. He knows wearables, ingestibles, tracking and fitness and sensors the here and now (it’s the future only to those who don’t get it.) And he’s putting it all together, right now, with the right people.
And here’s the really, really big part. Sure, Apple is meeting with the FDA for this, but my prediction is that the government gets involved. Notice all the for profit “helpers” arising de novo to assist doctors, hospitals, and clinics get Obamacized? Assisting with insurance? There is a huge window here too. This is it: insurance companies will require doctors to collect this data. If the heart rate is not within parameters, insert pharmco and a drug. And for the big picture, we have BIG DATA companies (which are funded as soon as they pop up) ready to verbalize, visualize and skywrite if necessary an interpretation. Big data and digital health are going to be big partners.
The iWatch/iMed/ICU will be a source of massive data. Data needs analysis, a story, meaning and a reason. The individual pieces of information are important individually. But collectively, we have big, big data, showing many pictures, telling many tales. Suppose we know that on January 10th, 2015 37% of all males between 50 and 75 living in Los Gatos had something in common – perhaps we might learn the heart rate of that population group during a 3.9 earthquake.
The data received will be massaged every which way, needed or not, and it will be sold with a story that begins, “If you knew…..” “then you would/could/should…” The data analytics folks will fill in the blanks for you.
The monetization of the digital health revolution has begun long before you even knew your values had value.
Buy Apple? Why not? Apple buys Apple. A lot of it. And who knows better what this means than Apple?
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