From Blake Dodge’s “Insiders in Apple’s healthcare organization say its leaders suppress concerns and mislead executives” posted Tuesday:
Apple’s half-decade push to reinvent healthcare is faltering.
The most valuable company, known for its nearly ubiquitous phones, computers, and watches, has made health central to its strategy — CEO Tim Cook has even pointed to health as the area where Apple will make its greatest contribution to mankind.
Several hundred engineers, program managers, data scientists, designers, and physicians are devoted to fulfilling Cook’s promise, exploring the best ways to put Apple’s magic touch on everything from medical research to doctor visits.
But early excitement unleashed by the Apple Watch’s capabilities, such as detecting abnormal heart rates, has been marred by a string of high-level departures and setbacks in the company’s health group. In August, Insider reported that Apple was scrapping an internal project called HealthHabit, which was designed to make Apple devices a vital link between patients and doctors.
It’s a symptom of what insiders say are deeper organizational problems that have left the health group without clear direction and struggling to mesh Apple’s hardware-oriented culture with the practices of the medical business.
People at Apple Health said that they saw colleagues face retribution for disagreeing with superiors and that concerns have been expressed on more than one occasion about the way health data is used to develop products. The situation has gotten so serious that some employees have lodged complaints with Apple’s most senior executives, including Cook and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who oversees the health effort.
My take: Apple PR came out with guns blazing, but Apple Watch still can’t measure blood sugar and AirPods still don’t work as hearing aids.
Neither has Apple released an electric vehicle. How many products has Samsung or Google or MSFT released that were quietly discounted. Hard to tell…nobody bought them.
The problem is, the UCLA docs cannot get data input for analysis, graphing, trending over time, and other specific test and data analysis. They can do this with internally generated lab data both inpatient and outpatient but not with outside labs.
To me, in 2021, after 20+ years of freaking computer advances and electronic medical records development, it is INFURIATING that hospitals, medical systems, outpatient doctors, laboratories, outside test and imaging results plus images themselves are NOT a shareable and more easily communicated in commonly agreed or standardized secure formats – everyone wants to have their own somewhat proprietary system (to make $$$$$ and market share). The appropriate concerns about data security and integrity are confounded with entrenched companies making data sharing DIFFICULT, if not impossible, and the use of antiquated fax and paper systems illustrate the lack of vision and interest in a solution. Pharmacies are STILL NOT tied into central databases so that patient prescriptions from multiple providers cannot be tracked in real time and red flags placed against abusive patients and offending and enabling physicians.
Top that with the common and well know stalling and obsfucation tactics of health insurance companies (Anthem Blue Cross is the worst) trying to limit payouts and handing the bag to patients and healthcare delivery, and it’s no wonder patient care, reimbursement, and costs are so F***ed up in the US.
I want Apple to help create systems that would solve these issues and drag, nay, YANK and DISRUPT the “good ole boy” healthcare industry into a much better health informatics structure. That would be a giant first step.
Everyone has a fiefdom. I live in Charlottesville VA and we have two hospital groups: Sentara Health and UVA. Both of them use //the same web based app – MyChart//.
I have a login for MyChart Sentara and another for MyChart UVA – My medical data is split between the two. There is no MyChart “me”. There is only me UVA and me Sentara. The current state of affairs is that the doctors from UVA and Sentara have access to both data sets and can access “me” by combining the data from both by reading each separately. It must drive them bonkers to have to check into both sets to get “me”.
Needless to say, I have to login twice to get to my health data too.
And, of course, health care providers are not IT people, so they’re not going to lean forward in technology (which is just another piece of overhead cost…)
Progress is so slow.
Apple will get there. They always do. And maybe there are real HR issues, or maybe there or just some disgruntled employees, or both.
Globally health care is $16T. Just one area, clinical trials is $64B (back in 2017). Already fall detectors and Apple’s “EGC” can save lives.
Yes, hearing aids and blood sugar monitoring will be great. We’ll have to wait.
Half decade = 5 years, last I checked, so how can you cite something to be “faltering” where the timespan for “reinventing” healthcare, one of the most entrenched, important and all-encompassing systems affecting a population, would probably take decades to be solidly effective?
Opinions on Apple’s methods can be SO often myopic when Apple obviously plays the slow hand. A chick cracks its shell when ready. Not before.