As sure as apple cider mills in October, the Apple rumor mill is heating up, particularly as it applies to healthcare. This fall’s crop is especially juicy.
Politico took the latest crack at gazing into the opaque ball (or whatever the opposite of crystal is), trying to figure out what Apple might be up to. In a story published Tuesday afternoon, Politico reported that the tech giant recently deleted a job listing seeking a lawyer specializing in healthcare data privacy and FDA compliance. That could mean that someone’s been hired.
Already in the Apple fold are nearly 100 employees with experience in healthcare or “with significant medical backgrounds,” Politico reported, citing a review of LinkedIn page. According to that story:
The current roster includes 22 staff with expertise in medical devices, for example, and 17 medical sensor experts. The staff include a designer who made a package of sensors and software to assess whether the sounds of one’s joints indicate osteoporosis, and an individual with expertise in atrial fibrillation.
The publication also referenced a Bloomberg story from last week, which said Cupertino, California-based Apple was looking to add clinical decision support to its HealthKit health information platform. HealthKit might serve as an interoperability tool in the future, Bloomberg reported.
Bloomberg also suggested Apple may interested in developing EHRs, though it seems the business news service misinterpreted what health IT insiders consider to be EHRs. Politico did report that 10 of Apple’s health employees have “EHR backgrounds.”
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.
The Bloomberg story did reference Apple’s purchase of Gliimpse in August. That story called Gliimpse “a startup that built software to pull electronic health records from different databases and in different formats, then store them in one place.” MedCity News called it an untethered personal health record, a field littered with failures.
But Gliimpse seems like just one piece of a vision that Apple hasn’t publicly discussed in more than vague generalities.
In recent weeks, Apple has hired Dr. Mike Evans, a digital health guru and YouTube star from Canada. The company also reportedly set new, more-stringent requirements for iOS app developers that could have a bigger impact on digital health than any potential EHR.
Photo: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
