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Apple’s Future is Health

Posted on January 17, 2019 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical Leave a comment

What it is: Apple’s hiring of health related talent has increased 400% since 2017.

At one time, Apple relied on the Macintosh computer for all its revenue, but the world had already standardized on Windows so Apple had little room for growth focusing on personal computers.

Then Apple introduced the iPod and iTunes, and suddenly portable music players and music downloads gave Apple a huge boost in revenue while helping it rely less on the Macintosh.

When smartphones threatened to kill the iPod market, Apple reduced their dependence on the iPod by releasing the iPhone. The iPhone proved so popular that it defined the current smartphone market.

However, the smartphone market is slowing down. People aren’t upgrading their smartphones as often because each new model offers minor improvements over the current models. That means people are holding on to their smartphones longer, which means slowing smartphone sales.

Not only is Apple reducing their future revenue guidance due to slowing iPhone sales, but Samsung is also forecasting a downturn in smartphone sales as well. The problem isn’t just Apple but the overall smartphone market.

That’s why Apple has been diversifying recently with services such as Apple Music, Apple Books, and Apple Pay. the idea is to reduce dependence on hardware and make money whether people are using older products or not.

With iPhone sales slowing and showing no signs of suddenly picking up ever again, Apple needs a new market to target and that new market will likely be health, led by wearable computers such as the Apple Watch.

Like the iPhone, the Apple Watch has gone through major improvements with each generation although there’s little reason to upgrade each year with the Apple Watch.

However what will keep people pinned to the Apple Watch will be its improving health sensors. Since everyone (especially older people) are concerned about their health, it’s easy to see how wearable computers such as the Apple Watch and future Apple smart glasses product can use health as their primary focus, targeting the world’s aging population.

Far more people care about their health than care about using the latest smartphone. For that reason, health will be Apple’s new focus. Unlike smartphones, health-related products take more time to develop, which means it will be harder to take off-the-shelf components and slap them together to mimic an Apple Watch.

The iPhone is fine, but it will no longer be the primary driving force of Apple any more just like Apple no longer depends on the iPod or the Macintosh for the bulk of its revenue.

Health is the new focus because everyone is a potential customer, even people who don’t like Apple. Such people will have to decide if their health is more important than their irrational dislike of Apple because their lives literally depend on their decision.

Getting Health Care From a Virtual Assistant

Posted on January 2, 2019 by admin Posted in Medical, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: With the rising cost for health care, virtual assistants can help save money.

Health care is expensive because it relies on people. Imagine how expensive books would be if instead of relying on printing presses, we had to rely on scriveners who manually copied books word by word?

So to reduce the cost of health care, many companies are looking at virtual assistants. The goal is to let virtual assistants handle common cases and then let specialists handle specific cases if the virtual assistant can’t answer a person’s questions.

Already virtual assistants answer phone calls and route your call to the proper person after trying to help you robotically. So using virtual assistants makes sense in health care as a way to lower costs and provide basic health care to people at the same time.

This brings up an interesting question. The main benefit of the Apple Watch and other wearable computers is to offer real-time health monitoring. Perhaps the benefit of virtual assistants controlled solely by voice (such as Siri on HomePod) could be answering common questions.

Right now, people use smart speakers for asking questions about the weather or traffic, but that’s not necessarily a crucial task. That explains why many people often use a smart speaker initially then get bored and leave it alone without ever using it again.

So virtual health assistants offer the potential of giving smart speakers a definite purpose, targeting people with health issues. At the very least, a smart speaker could act like an emergency device for senior citizens. If someone falls and can’t reach a phone, they can call the smart speaker for help.

Right now, smart speakers are an interesting concept but generally little practical value. By focusing on niches like health care, smart speakers could become more useful to people who regularly need to chat with doctors.

The smart speaker market currently lacks a compelling need. What problem does it solve that makes it worth buying and using? Virtual health assistants offer one way to make smart speakers useful. Another might be foreign language training by letting you practice talking to a smart speaker before you risk looking foolish trying to talk to a native speaker in another country.

The smart speaker market needs virtual assistants in the health field (or any field) to become more popular and commonplace. Voice-controlled interfaces are a growing field and as virtual assistants like Siri gain more knowledge about medical conditions and health problems, they can be more useful for that particular health-oriented market.

The Apple Watches Detects Man’s Irregular Heart Beat

Posted on December 12, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical Leave a comment

Ed Dentel recently got the latest Apple Watch and decided to play around with its electrocardiogram app. Strangely, the app warned him of atrial fibrillation. Since Ed exercises regularly and had no history of heart problems, he assumed the app was wrong and ignored its warning.

Each time Ed tried the apple Watch, it warned him of atrial fibrillation until he finally started to get worried and went to see a doctor. That’s when he learned that his Apple Watch was right and by seeking medical attention, he might have just saved his life.

No technology is useful unless it solves a problem. Cars solve the problem of transportation, telephones solve the problem of communication, and television solves the problem of viewing information over long distances.

So when people first criticized the Apple Watch, they couldn’t figure out why they might want or need one. Over time, the purpose of the Apple Watch has been made strikingly clear. Wearable computers like the Apple Watch exist to solve the problem of real-time health monitoring.

In the old days, the only way doctors could get medical information form a patient was for the patient to appear in the office and connect them to machines to measure their body functions. With wearable computers like the Apple Watch, individuals clan constantly monitor their health symptoms everyday far easier and more conveniently than going to a doctor’s office. The Apple Watch is for everyone interested in health and that includes everyone.

If you aren’t interested in your own health, feel free to ignore the benefits of technology like wearable computers. For the rest of us, the Apple Watch will only get more sophisticated, accurate, and convenient. Pretty soon anyone not wearing a computer like an Apple Watch will be seen in the same light as people who still refuse to use a computer or a mobile phone.

Now that the purpose of the Apple Watch is clear, Apple just needs to work on finding crucial uses for their other devices such as the Apple TV or HomePod. HomePod offers hands-free computing, but what is the crucial need for that? Apple TV offers the convenience of cutting the cord to cable subscriptions, but that’s not exactly a pressing need for many people when rival products do the exact same thing.

The Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad sell so well because they have a clear purpose. HomePod and Apple TV do not sell as well because their purpose is not as crystal clear. When Apple can figure out the purpose of hands-free computing (HomePod) or the Apple TV, then they’ll have another hit on their hands just like the Apple Watch.

Apple Watch Users 34 Percent More Active

Posted on November 29, 2018 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, Medical Leave a comment

What it is: Participants in the John Hancock Vitality program who were given Apple Watches for $25 showed greater physical activity compared to users without one.

There’s an old saying that what gets measured gets improved upon. In other words, if you track a certain activity, you know exactly where you stand at any given time so you know what you need to do to reach your goals. In the dieting world, tracking your calorie intake insures you don’t consume more calories than you should. Without measuring your activity, it’s too easy to lose track of your goals.

The RAND Corporation tracked 400,000 people across the US, Europe and South Africa and found that incentives including subsidized Apple Watches significantly improved people’s activity. In the research conducted for financial and life insurance firm John Hancock, participants with a watch on average increased their number of active days by 31 percent on the company’s Vitality program.

In other words, people tracking their physical activity tend to do it more often than people who do not track their physical activity. The Apple Watch and other wearable computers simply makes it easy for anyone to measure their physical activity daily. When you can see you’re not reaching your physical activity goals, you’ll have the incentive to increase your activity to meet those goals.

The Apple Watch’s primary purpose is real-time health monitoring. Anyone interested in maintaining their health is a candidate for the Apple Watch, which is practically everyone. As more insurance companies learn the advantages of the Apple Watch, it will be to their benefit to subsidize the cost of Apple Watches to increase the health of their customers. The healthier people remain, the less likely they’ll need health insurance, which simply makes the insurance companies more money by not paying out massive benefits.

The insurance companies are giving away Apple Watches out of the goodness of their heart but because it’s a sound business decision that actually benefits everyone (not just the insurance company). By staying healthy with an Apple Watch, people can live longer, more enjoyable lives. By not needing health insurance, insurance companies can keep more of the premiums for themselves.

The Apple Watch is going to be far more important than the iPhone in the near future because not everyone needs or wants an iPhone, but everyone will need or want to stay healthy. Of course, with more people using the Apple Watch, more people will have an incentive to use other Apple products like the iPhone or Macintosh.

Wearable computers like the Apple Watch are the future of Apple. Just like the iPod gradually faded in importance over time, so will the iPhone gradually fade in importance compared to the Apple Watch. When Apple releases smart glasses, that’s when the real revolution in wearable computers will take off.

United Healthcare Offering Free Apple Watch

Posted on November 15, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical Leave a comment

What it is: United Healthcare is offering the series 3 Apple Watch for free.

Insurance companies are in business to make money so if they can minimize payments, they’ll make more money. That’s why health insurance companies like United Healthcare are looking at wearable devices such as the Apple Watch to help reduce costs. The idea is that United Healthcare will give you an Apple Watch series 3 absolutely free. The only catch is that you must meet regular physical activity goals.

The program’s walking goals are centered around frequency (walking 500 steps within seven minutes six times per day, at least an hour apart), intensity (3,000 steps within 30 minutes) and tenacity (10,000 total steps each day). If participants meet these daily goals, they can own the watch in six months.

United Healthcare is betting that people excited to get a free Apple Watch will be more motivated to stay active and healthy. The more healthy people United Healthcare has, the less likely they’ll fall sick and need payment from the insurance company. So companies like United Healthcare aren’t offering the Apple Watch solely out of the goodness of their heart but because it’s a pragmatic business decision.

Patients benefit because they stay healthy and get a free Apple Watch. The insurance company benefits because they pay less out and keep more of the premiums for themselves, so everybody wins. Expect more health insurance companies to start offering similar programs, giving away free wearable devices in return for meeting specific exercise and activity goals. If you can get a free Apple Watch just by improving your health, why wouldn’t you sign up with United Healthcare instead of another company that does not offer a similar program?

The main purpose of wearable computers like the Apple Watch is real-time health monitoring so anything that can improve your health will simply benefit everyone. If you want to stay healthy, using the Apple Watch (whether for free or not) will simply improve the quality of your life, and that’s something no amount of money can replace.

Apple Intern Turns to Medicine

Posted on October 26, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical, Software Leave a comment

What it is: An Apple intern used his Apple Watch to monitor the pulse of an unconscious woman.

While on a flight from Arizona to Washington D.C., Brian Shear, an intern at Apple, helped a physician monitor an unconscious woman on the plane. Using his Apple Watch, Brian Shear captured the woman’s pulse information and then gave that information to doctors so they could use that information to help her. That’s when Brian Shear decided instead of working for a company making lifesaving equipment, he wanted to become a doctor and use technology to help others.

Brain Shear is now studying medicine at Central Michigan University and came up with another idea from his time at Apple. The hospital created a 50-page manual for brain tumor patients. Brain decided to turn this 50-page manual and convert it into an ebook using the free iBooks Author program. By making the manual interactive, Brian believes that patients will use and read the information. Even better, he can easily send this manual to others and duplicate it freely, completely eliminating printing costs with the paper manual.

By using the Apple Watch and iBooks Author, Brian Shear has shown how doctors in the future can use technology to save lives and provide information to patients. To read more about Brian Shear, click here.