The Apple Watch, debuted in 2014, as a style accessory and symbol for tech-savvy Apple fans. Over the years, the Apple Watch has emerged as the ultimate wearable for health tracking. With reliable data advanced sensors, healthcare facilities have even seen some doctors incorporate the Apple Watch into their patient-care toolkits. While there are plenty of health trackers on the market, for the Apple Watch, it was always about more than just providing sensors and raw health data to users.
From getting instant ECG reports at any time to keeping up with health trends now, Apple is trying to help users understand the ‘health signals’ that their bodies provide from time to time. But how did health become the main focus for Apple or what is Apple trying to do differently?
Sumbul Desai, Vice President, Apple Health in exclusive interview with Debashish Sarkar, Editor, News18 Tech Shares some insight into how things are decoded at Apple.
It’s very organic. You know, we’ve never sat back and said, well, one day we’ll do it about health. Infection is very organic. What’s more, when we introduced the Apple Watch, we put in the heart rate sensor because of our focus on accuracy to make sure we were accurate in measuring calories. And as a result of that, what happened is just because people are wearing watches all the time now, they basically wear heart rate monitors. And so we started getting letters based on that. And the letter said, hey, I was wearing my Apple Watch, and I noticed that my heart rate had gone up. I went to the doctor and found out that I have an infection or I have an allergy or I have AFib.
At Apple, we’ve never sat back and said, okay, one day we’re going to do health.
Then we (at Apple) said, well, can we go ahead? So then we introduced the high heart rate notification and we got more letters. People started writing to us saying: I finally found my high heart rate recovery. One of my favorite stories was a mother who is pregnant, reported a high heart rate, went to the hospital with a thyroid storm, which can actually be fatal to the fetus and basically ended up saving her fetus’s life. Because he was notified and was able to get there early.
Then we launched the low heart rate notification, when we launched the high heart rate notification a lot of the letters were around AFib. So we said, okay, okay, we can tell you your heart rate. Now let’s look at the rhythm of the heart. And then we started pulling on that thread, and we dug into AFib notification. And we introduced irregular heart rate notifications to the ECG feature.
We also got more letters about how people noticed AFib, which basically informed people about things like blockages in their arteries. and then we introduced ‘AFib Burden’ it’s not in India Not yet, but it’s a feature that will tell you how long you’ve been in AFib. So the gist of that story really is that we were pulling the thread as we received more letters and heard from customers, and it was a very organic journey.
It is a multifactorial process. Often, as I said, we get letters, okay. And those letters then allow us to think and maybe give us a hint that we should go a little deeper into this. So we definitely use that as a mechanism. We have a very cross functional team. So everyone in the team will come up with ideas.
The great thing about working at a company like Apple is that ideas come from all levels.
The great thing about working at a company like Apple is that ideas come from all levels. And then we’ll evaluate whether we think we can really scientifically deliver on that idea. If we think we can, we start with doing an initial engineering feasibility study, then if we learn from that data that we think it’s likely to do it, we do a validation study, so you algorithm Let’s start developing, then we do even more validation studies. And then once we have the validation studies, we feel good about the metrics, then we start designing the features.
It is a very long process. But what it’s really based on is the belief that we need to provide actionable insights that are based in science that we can do live or in a privacy protected manner and that empowers the user to live healthier lives . So that really helps drive our selection of what to work on next.
We’re very cross functional at Apple. We work with practitioners on our team, we have designers, we have engineers, we have algorithm engineers, we collaborate with external partners. Sometimes we collaborate with prominent opinion leaders who are experts in certain types of medicine or science. We cooperate with institutions. Basically, what we’re saying is that almost everyone at Apple touches every product that we deliver, and it’s very cross functional.
…Almost everyone at Apple touches every product we deliver, and it’s very, very cross functional.
It’s something that I think we’re still very early in our process. You know, the ‘Health’ app, if you notice, has a feature called ‘Trends’. The real purpose of ‘Trends’ is to start showing users insights that might inspire them. So for example, if I look at my instincts, I don’t get much sleep because of travel. So, the Health app showed that the number of hours I slept had decreased. So, the idea is that as I start to see connections to changes in the data, like, we’re going to put more effort into being able to translate the data so that users can really get more health insights.
The real purpose of ‘Trends’ is to start showing users insights that might inspire them.
But you know, we need to be careful that we balance health information and eliminate over-information. And, as you know, people tend to ignore health information, providing insight that is actionable and actually engages the user is more meaningful. So it’s something we’re thinking about a lot, but I would say we’re still very early, we can do a lot more there.
I think most therapists would agree that if you educate people, the fear goes away. Fear comes from not understanding the ‘why’ behind things. And we spend a lot of time, if you look at our health features, those articles we always issue with the feature, right? So for example, if you go into the Apple Health app, there will be an article on why sleep is important, or what does cardio fitness mean? In fact, I think that’s what’s so powerful about what we do at Apple. This is an element of educating customers in areas of health that they may not have understood before.
Fear comes from not understanding the ‘why’ behind things.
And really the hope is, the more you educate, I’ll say this as a practitioner, the more you spend time educating people, the less they fear it, the more acceptable it is. And the more they understand the reason behind it, and then their motivations for what they’re doing are really around, you know, improving for the right reasons.
There’s always a risk with any data, isn’t there? So the way we approach that threshold (high heart rate above 100 bpm) is based on medical science. So the threshold is not a threshold that Apple develops, it’s a threshold that we use clinical science to guide. And the reality is, if you’re above 110, you’re tachycardic. So you are clinically tachycardic. Now, you may or may not have a condition, you may have anxiety, which you can breathe in your own way and reduce it. Or you may have shortness of breath that causes a high heart rate. We are only there to provide information. What’s really important is that that information needs to be used in conjunction with other factors.
We are not trying to replace Dr. What we’re asking you to do at Apple: Am I feeling unusual?
So, we are not trying to replace the doctor. What we’re asking you to do at Apple: Am I feeling unusual? Because if you notice, when it says high heart rate notification, it says, if this is an abnormal thing for you, you should contact a doctor. So we think a lot about that language. We don’t say go to the doctor. And so I think we’ll narrow it down as best we can. And we try to explain its meaning to the user so that they can take right to next step.
That’s why privacy is never a sacrifice in everything we do at Apple. We think you should expect the same privacy from your technology as you would from your doctor. We enable the use of our metrics through Health Kit. And there’s inherent privacy in how those metrics are used. So ultimately, we’re very focused on making sure that even within our developer ecosystem, that privacy is number one, and we think about it the same way. To ensure this we have some rules that we have implemented.
Privacy is never a sacrifice in anything we do at Apple.
We’re really focused on empowering customers to really take health into their own hands because after all, health is such a personal thing that it’s really important to make sure that you as an individual really Understanding the ‘why’ behind your health, we deliver actionable insights that are based on science with privacy at its core. And our approach is really focusing on the customer. We have research studies through our Verified Research program where Apple Watches are used in clinical health settings. And we’re really excited to see what we learn there.
There are a few examples of life insurance companies using the watch, and we’re really excited to see what we learn there.
We have some initiatives that we’ve done, you know, Vitality, some examples of life insurance companies using the watch, and we’re really excited to see what we learn there. But when we design our, you know, our features and products, we’re really thinking about you—the user.
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