Health and Fitness

Apple's fitness streaming service, Apple Fitness+, continues to be a strong competitor to Peloton, a well-established service that has become a significant player in the digital fitness space. Both Apple Fitness+ and Peloton offer a range of polished workout routines, delivered by enthusiastic instructors and accompanied by motivating music playlists. As both subscription services share...

Apple made some notable improvements to the Health app in iOS 15, primarily focused on helping iPhone users care for elderly parents and others who might need additional medical oversight and help. There are extensive sharing features that let users keep an eye on the health data of a loved one, plus bonus features like walking steadiness metrics and improvements to how lab results are...

Apple today highlighted the Vision Pro's ability to aid the healthcare industry, showcasing a wide range of apps now available on the visionOS App Store. Apple explained how immersive apps that blend digital content with the physical world can transform how medical professionals train, plan surgeries, and engage in patient care both in clinical settings and at home. For example, the myMako...

Apple is researching strain gage sensors, likely in an effort to improve the Apple Watch's strength training capabilities, according to a recent job listing (via MyHealthyApple). The job listing from Apple's Health Technologies team seeks engineers with "exposure to analog electronics, preferably mechatronic systems utilizing actuators, temperature sensors, strain gages, and photodiodes."...

The Apple Watch can help treat a key symptom of sickle cell disease and changes to Apple's speech recognition algorithm could help people with a stutter, new studies propose. According to a study conducted by researchers at Duke University's Day Hospital (via MyHealthyApple), the Apple Watch could help treat vaso-occlusive crises (VOCs), a key complication caused by sickle cell disease that...

Apple's vice president of health Sumbul Desai today spoke with Indian publication Businessline, where she talked about Apple's health initiatives and gave a tiny bit of insight into Apple's thoughts on glucose monitoring for the Apple Watch. When asked if Apple would bring blood sugar tracking sensors to the Apple Watch, Desai said that these capabilities are "really important areas, but...

An iPhone 13 feature "will innovate patient eye care and telemedicine," according to a San Diego-based doctor who has found an unexpected use for one of the device's new abilities. Detailed in a post on LinkedIn, opthalmologist and digital health specialist Dr. Tommy Korn explained that he has been using the ‌iPhone 13‌ Pro Max to take high-quality macro images of patients' eyes. The ‌iPho...

United Airlines today announced that its Travel-Ready Center is offering Apple Health app integration to make it easier for customers to share their verified vaccination records ahead of traveling. Apple in iOS 15 added a feature that lets iPhone owners add their SMART Health Card formatted vaccination records to the Apple Health app, with those records able to be used for vaccine...

Oculus owner Facebook may soon allow its Oculus virtual reality headsets to report workout data to the Apple Health app, reports Bloomberg. The Oculus iPhone app has code that would allow workouts completed with the Oculus headset to be recorded in the Health app like other workout data. The Oculus app would be able to report health-related metrics like exercise minutes and number of...

Apple may be designing and developing its own "health hardware products," according to a job listing spotted by MyHealthyApple. Apple is hiring a Senior Engineering Project Manager to join Apple's Health Hardware group, which is part of Apple's Health Technologies division. The listing explicitly states that Apple is developing its own health hardware products, which appear to be separate...

Apple is today launching a new "Time to Walk" feature that will allow Apple Watch owners who are Apple Fitness+ subscribers to listen to audio stories from celebrities, musicians, athletes, and other influential people while they walk. Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams and Director of Fitness and Health technologies Jay Blahnik spoke to The Independent about the new feature to give ...

Amazon has today announced "Halo," a new wearable with health and fitness tracking capabilities, reports The Verge. The Amazon Halo wristband consists of a sensor module and a band that attaches to the top of it. The sensor contains an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a heart rate monitor, two microphones, an LED indicator light, and a button to turn the microphone on or off. The Halo...

Apple today informed developers that it has released updated Human Interface Guidelines for HealthKit, providing new guidance on using the Apple Health app icon, additional guidance on using Apple Health-related terms, and new privacy and data usage guidelines. HealthKit is the SDK that allows developers to create integrations with the Apple Health app for health and fitness-focused apps,...

Apple is working on a new Apple Watch feature that detects blood oxygen levels, according to newly discovered code snippets in iOS 14 (via 9to5Mac). Blood oxygen saturation naturally fluctuates throughout the day, but large variations can be linked to health issues. For example, 95-100 percent oxygen in the blood is considered normal, but a drop below that percentage could be a sign of a...

Apple's VP of Health Dr. Sumbul Desai recently sat down for an interview with MobiHealthNews where she discussed Apple's health products, the company's relationship with the FDA, the success of the ECG feature on the Apple Watch, and more. On the topic of Apple's relationship with the FDA, Desai said that while Apple has a "good" relationship with the FDA, the FDA asked "hard questions" about...

Zimmer Biomet, a company that develops joint replacement products, today announced that it is working with Apple to improve patient experience with Apple Watch and iPhone following knee and hip replacements. A new Zimmer Biomet mymobility app uses the Apple Watch to "facilitate a new level of connection" between patients and their doctors as they recover from major joint replacement surgery....

Third party sleep tracking app AutoSleep reached version 5.0 on Tuesday, introducing a slew of new features and improvements, including iPhone X support and live sleep tracking on Apple Watch. With later models of Apple Watch benefiting from major improvements in battery life, many Watch owners now wear their device to bed. Despite this, Apple still doesn't provide a native sleep tracking...

Free third-party fitness app Workouts++ got its 2.0 release on Tuesday, bringing a wealth of new features and improvements to the software, almost a year after its debut on iOS and Apple Watch. Users looking for an alternative to the native watchOS Workout app should find plenty to pique their interest in this update, which makes the most of new APIs available since the release of watchOS 4...

Apple has hired the lead doctor of Stanford University's digital health initiative, Sumbul Desai, to take on an unspecified role in one of the tech company's health projects. The hire was rumored earlier this month, but Stanford Medicine confirmed it to Internet Health Management on Friday. Desai headed up Stanford's Center for Digital Health, launched by the university's School of Medicine in ...

In its quest to turn the iPhone into a comprehensive health repository for every iPhone user, Apple has teamed up with Health Gorilla, a company specializing in aggregating diagnostic information, reports CNBC. Citing two sources familiar with Apple's plans, CNBC says Apple is working with Health Gorilla to add diagnostic data to the iPhone by cooperating with hospitals, imaging centers, and...

Apple is exploring an electronic tagging solution to make it easier for Apple Watch users to track their calorie and nutritional intake as part of a healthy lifestyle, as shown in a patent newly granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Many of today's healthy eating and diet-based food apps require users to manually input nutrition information into their mobile devices, whether by...

Last May, Apple hired Nest's former Vice President of Technology, Yoky Matsuoka, to help run the company's health initiatives, but she ended up leaving Apple towards the end of 2016. Matsuoka is now joining the Nest team once again as the Alphabet-owed company has re-hired the robotics expert as the Chief Technology Officer for the Nest Learning Thermostat (via Bloomberg). In her new role, she ...