Amidst the crashing live stream, U2 album launch and persnickety Samsung tweets, Apple unveiled its own submission to the wearables market. Healthcare entrepreneurs and bloggers who tuned in to the announcement alternated between excitement and annoyance over the pricing structure and design to the idea that anyone would want to share their heartbeat with other Apple Watch users.
The cost of entry for would-be smart watch owners isn’t cheap. Aside from buying one, users have to own an iPhone as well.
The watch has two fitness apps. An activity app tracks movement and a workout app is dedicated to specific sports, such as running, walking and cycling. Brian Fitzgerald, who live-blogged the event for The Wall Street Journal, wryly observed that one app on the watch “lets you know when you’ve been sitting too long. (Because sitting is the new smoking.)”
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Gigaom and others pointed out that Apple wants to add enough health and fitness features so that owners forget about their FitBits and other tracking devices.
Siva Raj, the CEO and founder of Revvo, was pleased about the haptic feedback, and heart rate monitors. “I can see many possibilities to get people up & active,” he tweeted. But he opined that the watch lacked GPS, so users would still have to bring their iPhones with them when they go for a run.
Mobile software developer Harold Smith III, who developed a prescription compliance app for the iPhone, Rxmindme, acquired by Walgreens in 2011, was unimpressed with the watch’s “ugly” appearance and would be waiting “to see how useful it is for capturing health data.”
Jason Oberfest, the founder and CEO of Mango Health, said its business “could not be more excited” about the watch. He said the company believes smaller technology lends itself to establishing more intimate relationships with consumers, which increases the potential for more effective interventions. “We saw this shift occur with the rise of smartphones, and I think we’ll see a similar dynamic with the rise of smart watches.”
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But he added one note of caution — the need to get the interface design right. “Smaller screen sizes put a huge premium on good interface design work. We love that because we think that separates great design teams from good design teams. In the case of the Apple Watch, the other key consideration we are focused on is online vs offline capabilities and how dependent the watch will be on being connected to the phone. Supporting offline modes is really important to our use case. If someone is out for a hike and needs to respond to a medication reminder we need to support that seamlessly.”
There was a little less attention on the healthcare applications for Apple’s iPhone 6. But TechCrunch called attention to the built-in barometer in the M8 “motion” chip to manage motion, count steps, and tell how many flights of stairs users take in one day.
“This improved M8 chip makes the iPhone a true health wearable. In short, it makes a number of current wearables obsolete or at least redundant. If earphone can act as a Fitbit or Basis band, why do you need both?”
Michael Ramirez, the CEO and co-founder of mobile health startup, Apothesource, which developed a drug aggregation app, PillFill, called attention to some features of the iPhone 6.
“Touch ID to integrate with 3rd party apps will certainly be useful in providing better and more accessible strong-security for sensitive health apps/data — I plan to integrate it into PillFill soon. It may even have wider applicability in meeting two-factor authentication required by some functions, such as e-prescribing applications for controlled substances.”
He added that he’d take a wait and see approach to HealthKit.
“It will be interesting to see how much pressure healthcare developers see to push patient data collected from their apps back into HealthKit. While HealthKit isn’t terribly useful yet for collecting data outside of pure consumer-input or wearable data (the only medications it currently supports are inhalers, for example), but I hold out hope that it could still provide some much-needed interoperability to the space in the future. That said, this information is highly coveted and jealously guarded by companies and Apple’s admirable stance prohibiting the use of HealthKit data use for advertising purposes will certainly deter some from using it. Another looming limitation is the ever-present personal/clinical data divide, with every current EHR either disregarding such personally-collected data entirely or treating it as second-class, non-actionable information. I’m eager to hear what their reported Epic interface will cover as I think that will be very telling of how the big EHR incumbents are adapting to the prospect of a more engaged patient.
Some posts were skeptical about the circumstances in which smart watch wearers would share their heartbeat, as one feature permits. Some said speed dating, so maybe they’re thinking of this scene in Sherlock.
For some more highlights of reactions to the Apple Watch, click here.
