Since Apple treats its works-in-progress as state secrets, those of us on the outside are left to speculate on what the tech company might be up to, including in healthcare. Sometimes, we get some clues and are left to fill in the blanks.
This week brought a pretty interesting clue.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
Apple, of Cupertino, California, has hired Canadian digital health guru Dr. Mike Evans for an unspecified role in worldwide health innovation.
Evans is founder of the Health Design Lab at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. He also runs his own multimedia project, the Evans Health Lab, which “build[s] engaging health media to make the world a better, healthier place,” according to the lab’s website.
In a radio interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. this week, Evans didn’t give details about his job, but he did drop some hints.
“”I think why they are engaging me is the messaging,” Evans said, according to a written account of the radio appearance. “We’re searching for consistency, not perfection.”
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.
In a short video clip released by the CBC, Evans talked about how smartphones are changing medicine.
“In the future, I will prescribe you an app,” said Evans, a family physician. “I see you two or three days a year. The phone sees you every day.”
Here’s a short video clip from that radio appearance.
The CBC reported that Apple learned of Evans through his series of YouTube videos that feature his narration over hand drawings on a whiteboard. Evans has been pushing “peer-to-peer healthcare” in his videos for five years.
His consumer-focused “23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?” has been viewed more than 5 million times.
That video got a shout-out in a 2013 episode of “Orange Is The New Black.”
Evans discussed the video series in a 2013 interview with the Toronto Star. He said “23 and 1/2 hours” has been translated into a number of languages; the Arabic version got 800,000 views in a week.
Photo: YouTube user DocMikeEvans
