WSJ: Apple Piloted Running Its Own Subscription Based Primary Healthcare Service With ‘Apple Doctors’

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In 2016, Apple considered an “audacious” plan to launch its own healthcare service, based on a subscription, with “Apple doctors” at clinics for customers, according to The Wall Street Journal.



The project, which has since stalled due to internal concerns, was to offer customers an all-encompassing healthcare service that would integrate data collected from the iPhone and Apple Watch. On the project’s heels, an internal team studied how data collected from the Apple Watch could improve healthcare service.

One of its most ambitious healthcare ideas was a plan to offer primary-care medicine, conceived in 2016, according to documents and the people familiar with the plan. An Apple team spent months trying to figure out how the flood of health and wellness data collected from users of its smartwatch, first released in 2015, might be used to improve healthcare, the people said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has said one of Apple’s greatest contributions to humanity will be in health, and at one point, its biggest idea of that contribution would be its own healthcare service.

One of its most ambitious healthcare ideas was a plan to offer primary-care medicine, conceived in 2016, according to documents and the people familiar with the plan. An Apple team spent months trying to figure out how the flood of health and wellness data collected from users of its smartwatch, first released in 2015, might be used to improve healthcare, the people said.

The team decided one of the best ways to realize that vision was to provide a medical service of its own, said people familiar with the plan, linking data generated by Apple devices with virtual and in-person care provided by Apple doctors. Apple would offer primary care, but also continuous health monitoring as part of a subscription-based personalized health program, according to these people and the documents.

In 2017, a year after the idea was first conceived, Apple took over health clinics near WSJ: Apple Piloted Running Its Own Subscription Based Primary Healthcare Service With ‘Apple Doctors’