Building H #65: Roam if You Want To

Last week Apple released an unexpected, 60-page report that sums up their health efforts, which have been building up over the last eight years. It was unexpected because Apple usually makes news by introducing new products or reporting on financial performance. So it’s not clear why they released it, but in any case, it provides a good overview of both the range and the coherence of their work to improve health.

The report breaks Apple’s contributions down into two categories: “empowering users on their personal health journey” and “supporting the health ecosystem by collaborating with the medical community.” For the former, Apple describes the ways in which their devices (Watch and iPhone), apps and services have made it possible for people to collect, track, analyze and share over 150 types of data about their health and behaviors – and even seamlessly integrate data from medical records with data from daily experience. For both of us, who have been involved in digital health and advocated its empowerment potential since the very beginning (Thomas as a journalist for WIRED, author of The Decision Tree and then as a founder of the digital health company Iodine – and Steve as a funder, at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, of numerous early efforts to explore the applications of personal health data), the report sums up how far the field has advanced over the years. Apple has delivered impressively on so many of the ideas that were being kicked around in the late ‘00s and early 2010s. In addition to providing people with access to more and better information, Apple has facilitated an impressive set of large-scale research studies that leverage the ability of smartphones and wearables to collect data at scale.

Beyond their specific accomplishments, we commend Apple for taking the step to look horizontally, across the company, to take stock of the many ways that it is influencing health. And they did that pretty well. Well, almost. As our longtime readers can imagine, we would have liked to see them take the extra step and look beyond the many direct, intentional influences they have had on health and focus as well on the indirect influences that come from the day-to-day use of their products that do not focus on health. To analyze the effects on health behaviors like physical activity, sleep, and social connection that come from using Apple’s computers, phones, TVs and more. (We gave them a head start by analyzing both Apple Maps and Apple’s TV products and services in our last Building H Index report.) It is no small thing that the world’s biggest corporation is leveraging so many of its capabilities to give people the tools to pursue their health journeys in a world that makes health so challenging. Their contributions are rightly celebrated. But they should also take responsibility for their considerable role in shaping that world. Harnessing that power would be revolutionary.

Read the full newsletter.