The secretive, rapidly expanding health team inside Apple is working to turn the iPhone into a one-stop shop for all your medical information, according to a report from CNBC.
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Apple is reportedly working to make the iPhone the central hub for all your health data (AAPL)
The company has reportedly been in talks with clinics and hospitals, attended several health IT meetings, and is looking at potential startup acquisitions.
The Cupertino giant has reportedly been in talks with developers, hospitals, and various other industry groups, in an effort to build a system that would bring patients' clinical data and lab results to the iPhone to later be shared with third parties.
One of CNBC's sources mentioned that Apple is looking at startups in the cloud hosting space about potential acquisitions that could represent a good fit in the larger picture of its health division. (Apple bought health tech company Gliimpse last year.)
The tech giant's main aim with this would be to solve the so-called "interoperability crisis," by which medical data — still usually handled with PDF files or simply delivered by fax machines — is often hard to share between doctors and clinics. An operation like this would give patients a full, easily accessible track of their health data, which they could then later share in full with a trusted doctor.
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This would build on top of Apple's program to build a non-invasive blood sugar monitor system set to read levels without drawing blood, which we reported back in April, and signify a change in focus from the company, which would move from its existing fitness-related push (particularly with Apple Watch) to a broader involvement in the health field.
Bud Tribble, Apple's VP of software technology, allegedly spoke with health IT industry group The Carin Alliance, which is already working on giving patients greater control over their own medical data. CNBC also reports that Apple has been in talks with The Argonaut Project, too, another group that promotes open standards for health information, and hired a number of developers involved with FHIR, a popular protocol created to exchange electronic health data.
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