For a company supposedly not interested in building medical devices — at least the kind requiring FDA approval — Apple sure seems to be bringing on a lot of new people with medtech experience.
We learn this from an in-depth piece from BuzzFeed this week. (If you look past the clickbait, there’s actually some pretty good journalism happening on that site.)
BuzzFeed reported that Apple has advertised at least four jobs in its health technology division in the last two months, including for biomedical engineers and a laboratory technician. A review of LinkedIn profiles also has turned up evidence that five people with medical R&D experience have joined the company since October.
As the story noted:
In December and January, Apple posted two listings for biomedical engineers with a background in “medical, health, wellness and/or fitness sensors, devices, and applications.”
One position requires a “good understanding of non-invasive sensors used to measure biological signals” and comes with responsibilities that include developing “prototype hardware for physiological measurement applications.” Similarly, the other position requires experience designing studies that test “physiological measurement devices.”
A third listing seeks a lab technician with experience in biomedical or hardware engineering and health-related sensor technologies. Apple is also hiring a project manager who understands time frames for “human studies research” to keep work on schedule.
One of the recent hires was, according to Buzzfeed’s combing of LinkedIn, a former leader of research into sensor algorithms that went into Medtronic continuous glucose monitors. Another, who used to be an exercise physiologist at University of California, San Francisco, described her job at Apple as “Top Secret,” the story said.
These discoveries, BuzzFeed reminds us, recalls an Apple hiring pattern from 2014, when the Cupertino, California-based tech giant was hard at work on the first iteration of the Apple Watch.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
So what does this mean? Clearly, Apple wants to be a player in digital health.
Has CEO Tim Cook changed his mind since November, when he told The Telegraph that, “We don’t want to put the watch through the Food and Drug Administration process”? That’s quite possible.
A September 2014 teardown of the Apple Watch by iFixit revealed that the heart-rate monitor inside the watch actually is capable of acting as a pulse oximeter. The oxygen-sensing function is disabled, at least in the current generation of the product, clearly to avoid FDA regulation, but who’s to say Apple won’t offer a medical-grade version of the smartwatch in the future?
Cook did talk about add-ons to make the Apple Watch a medical device, though, as Buzzfeed noted. Maybe that’s the strategy.
We already know that third-party developers are building add-ons. For example, AliveCor has embedded a single-lead ECG into a replacement wristband for the Apple Watch, though that is still in the prototype phase.
Apple, as usual, isn’t talking, but the healthcare industry is, ahem, watching.
