Healthcare Technology Featured Article

March 18, 2014

Apple's Healthbook Brings New Fitness Tracking to Apple Devices


The healthcare market is a rapidly increasing one, thanks to the overall graying of the population as the Baby Boom generation approaches its retirement years. But beyond that, there's also an increased interest in health in general, as users eager to avoid getting involved in increasingly expensive medical care amid increasingly expensive health insurance. To that end, many new devices have come out to help users track health performance, calorie consumption, workout duration and the like. Apple, meanwhile, has recently been seen working on its own health tracking mechanism in the Healthbook.

The Healthbook—said to be currently testing with the iOS 8 operating system—is set to offer quite a bit in the way of health tracking, bringing together a host of formerly separate tools under one central Apple umbrella. Reports suggest that the Healthbook may be introduced at the upcoming Worldwide Developers' Conference event, but that it may get pushed back into future releases, so it will be worth keeping an eye on.

The Healthbook app will likely contain a variety of cards, in different colors, operating much the same way the Passbook does. Each card contains a different function, including offering tracking related to exercise, sleep, hydration levels, blood pressure, blood sugar, and more, making it useful for a wide array of different purposes. Some have suggested that Apple wasn't working on hydration levels, though current reports suggest that's not the case at all, while others have suggested health issues related to pregnancy and stress are also in line, though that could be fodder for a future release.

Apple has been, by several reports, bringing in some very big names in terms of developing the Healthbook app; Roy Raymann's company, for example, was brought in to handle some sleep tracking duties. Given that Raymann had been previously seen setting up Philips' “Sleep Experience” laboratory, Healthbook could have some very powerful sleep tracking mechanisms included. Also, Apple was seen working with Jay Blahnik in terms of fitness-related products from Apple, and given Blahnik's experience with Nike and similar companies, that could mean equally powerful applications in fitness tracking as well. Some have even expressed the idea that this could be tied into several other systems, like the potential iWatch that's likely still in the works at Apple. But it could be tied to a host of other devices like exercise bike trainers, scales, and a variety of others to allow Apple not only a centralized measuring system for several key health metrics, but also a vector for offering more peripheral devices.

The exact format that Healthbook will take—and what role it will play in Apple's overall operations—is still somewhat unclear. But there are several key possibilities emerging around this new system, and that means several new directions the company could be taking. Though just which possibilities will become reality won't be known for some time—at least until the WWDC event later on this year—there's plenty of room for speculation on this front.

Apple's history of innovation should prove to be a helpful development for the company in the short term, and in the long term, guide it into a future where it has a piece of the rapidly-growing healthcare market and even others beyond it. Apple remains, as ever, a company to watch, even in places where it hasn't been so visible in the past.

 
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