Apple’s growth in the digital health sector

Apple Company wants to provide a holistic approach to medical care because there is a growing interest in mHealth apps that can resolve the needs of patients and offer advanced services to healthcare centres across the world. The company wants to provide medical services to all its workforce and their respective families in a bid to cater to the medical needs of their staff members.

With the presence of other major players like Samsung in the mHealth domain, Apple has maintained its efficiency and consistency as it aims to improve its services and products for all its users so that medical organizations and patients can opt to choose their products and disregard those of its competitors.

For instance, the Apple users can use the Apple Watch to detect their medical state and still use its other features like making calls, sending text messages and creating appointments/ reminders.

The company’s first entry into the healthcare industry was through the invention of the HealthKit API which allowed developers to create healthcare apps for iOS platform.

The launch of the CareKit framework allowed developers to create apps that gave iPhone users the chance to track their own health on a daily basis through their mobile devices.

 

Apple Company has partnered with other startups like Gorilla Health to develop a secure clinical network whereby Apple doctors and physicians can access a patient’s medical history directly from their devices. The company developed the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) as a platform for Apple users to access their digital medical data. The company is looking forward to integrating medical data to iPhones for more people to access their data from their handheld devices.

The CEO, Tim Cook said, “The company is working closely with the FDA to regulate lower risk digital health products” for millions of Americans living in the United States.”

Furthermore, as a way to invest in the medical domain, Apple has partnered with other medical centres and companies through its business to business strategies to ensure that all centralised data for their devices coordinate with those of the medical centres.

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How is Apple targeting digital health market?

Apple’s involvement in the healthcare industry aims at establishing a consolidated network for promoting health and wellness among all its users. Therefore, the company created the AC Wellness Network whereby it provides a healthcare cover for all Apple employees. Through this wellness initiative, Apple aims to offer high-quality medical care while improving the patient experience.

Safeguarding and preventing unauthorised access to patients’ medical data is a functionality that Apple is heavily investing in to ensure the privacy of healthcare information. Furthermore, the company has invested in the medical research area by developing ResearchKit; an API that allows users to develop medical research applications need to solve some of the health crisis affecting the general public.

Apple is providing users with mobile technology as a form of service for them to use apps on their mobile devices to track, diagnose, monitor and analyze their health status without necessarily visiting a doctor’s office. It is through this technology that the company has been able to provide developers with a platform to create medical applications.

Through the acquisition of Gliimpse, Apple offers its customers with electronic health data which they can access directly from their smartphones and Apple related devices. Through the Apple Smart Watch, the company provides its clients with fitness wearable devices that monitor their health condition through the sensor technology to track a patient’s heart rate and other cardiac-related complications.

The creation of Apple’s software toolkits for the software applications has allowed the company to penetrate the medical industry as Apple developers created the ResearchKit, CareKit and the HealthKit.

All these applications allow medical organizations to carefully engage in research and innovation endeavours with the possibility of inventing new drugs and treatments to improve the quality of medical care.

As Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway companies merged to start a medical facility, Apple launched a wellness program known as the AC wellness initiative aimed at providing medical services to all Apple employees in the United States. The company aims to establish two clinics in Santa Clara whereby the centres will offer “personalised care” to all its sick staff.

Apple is embarking on a Research and Innovation mission to discover drugs and treatment plans that can solve the most devastating sickness, infections, and ailments affecting the world through the use of advanced mobile technology.

Forming alliances with medical centres around the US to understand the prevailing dilemma facing doctors and caregivers when it comes to the provisioning of medical care. The launch of medical applications and the invention of wearable devices such as the Apple Watch to track a user’s health metrics and sharing that data with their physicians.

This is why you should not compete with Apple

Apple Company is its own domain of health care services by integrating all of its services and products through its mobile platform operating system; iOS. It is a step in promoting its mobile devices and computerised system among healthcare givers in the country so that they can market itself as a corporate brand venturing into the medical sector.

By initiating the AC Wellness centre, Apple is integrating its technology into the healthcare industry by providing medical services to all its employees. Furthermore, developing wearable devices that use applications developed under the iOS platform allows the company to establish its own niche in the competitive healthcare industry.

Health care providers should find their own niche because competing with Apple Company is a lost battle since it is on a mission to create an entirely new database of medical records.

The company has implemented the broad approach by combining health-related data with medical data accessed from hospitals that are in collaboration with Apple in providing healthcare information to physicians and patients alike.

The fact that Apple has its own operating system is a sign that the company can develop as many medical applications as possible to customers worldwide. Furthermore, Apple is an internationally recognized mobile device brand well-known for manufacturing and designing products for its mobile users.

In addition, Apple has formed alliances and partnerships with other medical organizations to boost its scope of operations in the healthcare sector.

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