Apple In Talks to Roll Out HealthKit to Medical Professionals Across U.S.

I work in the medical field and it needs a company like apple to revolutionize some aspects of health care. Most systems are cumbersome and get in the way of health care professionals.

Let's hope apple can make a big difference and encourage others to do the same

This will either be a huge success or a total flop.

That's the first thing I said when I met my current wife. :apple:

Medical specialists will claim that that GUI will cause epilepsy.

I hope it doesn’t rely on iCloud for syncing and data integrity.

Carrots contain caffeine?

Only if you dip it in coffee

Your understanding of the point of care diagnostics market is flawed and your prediction is based on nothing but your personal feeling. A great way to predict what will happen!

I'm a bit surprised because your other posts usually demonstrate or present insight..

I think he's speaking strictly from the end user side. It's been proven that the majority of people on a daily basis will not sit there and record how much and what types of exercises they've done, duration/weight involved in these exercises and/or reps, distances they've walked/run/ridden, how much and what kind of foods they've consumed, their BP reading, try to calculate their caffeine and sugar intake, etc... There are plenty of apps available that already do this, and we don't see them exactly taking off. My Fitness Pal is a great app, but it takes a lot of dedication to keep it updated on a daily basis. Most "healthy" people just don't find the time.

I seriously start to believe that Apple has lobotomised all their UI designers...

I love how everyone predicts something as a failure before it's even been announced. I guess that's par for the course with Apple. :)

I love how everyone predicts something as a success before it's even been announced. I guess that's par for the course with Apple. :)

It has enormous potential but it seems like they're focusing entirely on the wrong things. As a physician I care only minimally about things like caffeine consumption, but if the app would have their med list, health history, and copies of labs or other diagnostics, that would be huge, especially if a person were traveling and not seeing their regular doctor. I could see the med list tying in with a pharmacy app that could remind people to pick up their refills. Or a protocol-driven reminder system for health maintenance and routine follow-up. A list of how many steps were taken per day is kind of the last thing I'd want a person wanting to show me in the office.

EMR systems like Epic are so horrible not only because of the system itself, but because of "meaningful use" and all the federal requirements for documentation. Thus, the potential for Apple to improve it is limited. But, we'll see where things go.

I think he's speaking strictly from the end user side. It's been proven that the majority of people on a daily basis will not sit there and record how much and what types of exercises they've done, duration/weight involved in these exercises and/or reps, distances they've walked/run/ridden, how much and what kind of foods they've consumed, their BP reading, try to calculate their caffeine and sugar intake, etc... There are plenty of apps available that already do this, and we don't see them exactly taking off. My Fitness Pal is a great app, but it takes a lot of dedication to keep it updated on a daily basis. Most "healthy" people just don't find the time.

I see your reasoning but it is incorrect. You can see by the supply in the market of new concepts that these kinds of apps and connected devices ARE taking off, although the market is still in its infancy. Look at the fitbit which is immensely popular despite still being a flawed concept. In these cases you shouldn't look at where we are NOW but where the market is going. It is growing at a very rapid pace.

The gain here is not in letting people actively record what they do, but intelligently recognising what the person is doing. I agree that no-one will likely log their food intake for longer than a month, but there are automatic solutions in development that wil be able to do that (e.g. Vessel).

In addition there is an absolutely huge market in terms of point of care diagnostics, such as blood pressure and glucose measurement. People that use these kinds of devices need to do so if they like it or not. The solutions to accurately record and manage the data are still very flawed and a solution provided by Apple that combines a number of these metrics and makes them available to physicians is exactly what the market needs. To give you an indication. The global diabetes market grows by 2.2% every year. By 2030 every tenth person will suffer from the disease. That is a huge market. I work in diabetes point of care devices and patients are waiting for these solutions, but most pharmaceutical manufacturers only focus on the direct measurement and not on the management solutions.