New in OS X: Get MacRumors Push Notifications on your Mac

Resubscribe Now Close

Apple Acquires Personal Health Data Recording Platform 'Gliimpse'

Monday August 22, 2016 6:13 am PDT by Mitchel Broussard
gliimpse app logoApple has acquired personal health and wellness startup Gliimpse, continuing its push into the health and fitness landscape that it began focusing on with the launch of the Apple Watch.

The company made the acquisition earlier in the year, according to Fast Company, but Apple has now confirmed the purchase with its usual response: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Gliimpse is a personal health platform that collects various fitness-related pieces of data for its users "to collect, personalize, and share a picture of their health data" at different stages of their personal journey. The company was funded by entrepreneur Anil Sethi and was founded in 2013, following Sethi's inspiration to create an easy way to track health data as he watched his sister battle breast cancer.
Gliimpse™ began with a simple idea – everyone should be able to manage their health records, and share them securely with those they trust. Currently in stealth, Gliimpse is healthcare’s platform for building patient-centric apps. By unlocking hospital silos, we aggregate fragmented data into Medicare mandated patient summaries. Gliimpse is your personal health history, in the palm of your hands.
As seen on the company's website, Gliimpse also lets users make daily journal entries to chronicle their emotional state of mind, track lab results, record levels of pain to inform a physician, and other privacy features that ensure each user's data stays secure. These features mark Gliimpse as a more healthcare-focused experience for users with serious ailments like diabetes and cancer, in contrast to more casual health upkeep apps, like Apple Health.

The new acquisition is a continuation of Apple's efforts to bolster its presence in the digital health field. Earlier in the month, the company re-hired Flipboard co-founder Evan Doll for a secretive position in its health initiative, and it's even been rumored that Apple is working on a new piece of hardware with a health-tracking focus -- which might also be another Apple Watch -- for release in 2017.

Apple's focus on health and wellness (which will also expand to mindfulness with its Breathe Apple Watch app this fall) was summarized by CEO Tim Cook when he appeared on "Mad Money" earlier in the year. Specifically, when host Jim Cramer asked whether it was "within the realm of our lifetime" that a device paired with Apple's HealthKit framework might be able to monitor diabetes, blood pressure, and detect cancer, Tim Cook said "Oh, I absolutely do."

Tags: HealthKit, fastcompany.com, Apple acquisition, health and fitness
[ 30 comments ]

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

Avatar
keysofanxiety
41 months ago

Incredibly BAD baiting of what can be a gullible public.


Not at all. That's the ultimate future goal - medicine straight out of Star Trek. The context of the question and the answers made it perfectly clear that we're talking about future possibilities; 20-40 years. That's a long, long time in technology.

It's what they're working towards. Nothing's impossible.
Rating: 9 Votes
Avatar
RedOrchestra
41 months ago

...asked whether it was "within the realm of our lifetime" that a device paired with Apple's HealthKit framework might be able to monitor diabetes, blood pressure, and detect cancer, Tim Cook said "Oh, I absolutely do."



Incredibly BAD baiting of what can be a gullible public.
Rating: 4 Votes
Avatar
SandboxGeneral
41 months ago

Not at all. That's the ultimate future goal - medicine straight out of Star Trek. The context of the question and the answers made it perfectly clear that we're talking about future possibilities; 20-40 years. That's a long, long time in technology.

It's what they're working towards. Nothing's impossible.

Much agreed. Just like 1,500 years ago we knew the Earth was the center of the universe and now we know much better. Imagine what we might know tomorrow or 20 to 40 years from now as our technology and knowledge gets better and better.
Rating: 4 Votes
Avatar
citysnaps
41 months ago

So all watch users will be walking around exhaling into their watch's build-it gas analyser app to see if they have lung cancer, yeah?


Within a lifetime of 40 or so years? Well, when difficult problems are approached without vision, curiosity, and imagination, very little is possible. The good news is that entrepreneurs/pioneers who dream do not suffer from that kind of close-minded malady.
Rating: 2 Votes
Avatar
zombierunner
41 months ago
Apple is such a big hoarder :D
Rating: 1 Votes
Avatar
djcerla
41 months ago
"when host Jim Cramer asked whether it was "within the realm of our lifetime" that a device paired with Apple's HealthKit framework might be able to monitor diabetes, blood pressure, and detect cancer, Tim Cook said "Oh, I absolutely do."

add "signal a heart attack 30 minutes before it strikes" and you have the complete picture of Tim Cook's professional life main goal.
Rating: 1 Votes
Avatar
Zandery
41 months ago

Add "signal a heart attack 30 minutes before it strikes" and you have the complete picture of Tim Cook's professional life main goal.

In all honesty I'd love to have this technology as well as the others, think of the lives that can be saved!
Rating: 1 Votes
Avatar
BuffaloTF
41 months ago

Incredibly BAD baiting of what can be a gullible public.


Not only is it not baiting, I don't know that it's even impossible right now. "A device paired with HealthKit"... A device... any device -- HealthKit isn't an app per se, it's a base code and a common dashboard that relies on something else using it. I don't think it'd be very difficult to make a PET scan interface with HealthKit and report your results into it. Costly, sure - but that's in the cost of the machine itself, not the integration... but definitely possible. The other items already exist today with products already in the market.
Rating: 1 Votes

[ Read All Comments ]