Why Health is Apple’s most important announcement from the 2019 Keynote
The Apple Watch took subtle but centre stage
As I board the train from Bratislava to Vienna on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, a ping reminds me that Apple’s annual and much-lauded keynote announcement is underway. Settling into my seat amongst visiting family, I pop my AirPods in and tap the notification open to start watching. Joining the stream halfway through the iPad presentation, I find myself wondering how Apple still manages to entrance and engage the everyman and everywoman to tune into their Special Event — not just the tech geeks and developers (no offence guys and gals.)
Apple’s presentation style is masterful, not so much emanating from the semi-nervous demeanour of the engineers that grace the stage once a year in their Silicon Valley-appropriate attire, but from the clear, precise and amazingly consumer-centric language that they use. An obsessive language junkie myself, I pay extra close attention to the well-reshearsed words and phrases that make it into the script.
One amazing example: Instead of focusing on processing power or other technical specs, they simply say the iPad has 3 times as many pixels, and is twice as fast as the leading PC. And it comes with a keyboard. (P.s. I recall these numbers without needing to look them up. That’s how effective they are.) Does Apple’s target consumer need to know anything else? As long as the iPad is mostly a glorified Facebook and gaming machine, that’s really all that matters.
But I digress. Back to Health, capital H.
Four cornerstone epiphanies struck me from the sea of announcements…
1
The Apple Watch is Apple’s Health platform — everything else the watch does is irrelevant.
That’s not to say the Apple Watch can’t do anything else, but that it almost doesn’t need to. While it has some nice features like the new smart compass or the ability to surface notifications from messaging apps, Health is where it shines, and where the Apple Watch goes from nice-to-have to can’t-live-without. Whether it’s the ECG heart monitor or fall detector (see next point), this nifty little computer (that comes clad in Hermès straps if you are so inclined) is the peace of mind that every guilt-ridden millennial will want to get their retired and ageing parents this Christmas.
2
Speaking of which… Fall detection is a big deal. A really big deal.
As I watch Stan Ng talk about this feature (which, by the way, I have no idea whether it’s proprietary to Apple or not, but more importantly who cares, because only Apple went out of their way to tell me about it so spectacularly) I recall Atul Guwande’s thoughts from his seminal masterpiece, Being Mortal.
(Side note: this book is a permanent and forever recommendation to anyone anywhere who ever asks me for one. I consider it Required Life Reading.)
Reading Atul was the first time that I had really taken the time to think about the dangers of falling, and I recalled his citing the story of a patient, Jean Gavrilles, in this article that had appeared in the New Yorker:
She was doing impressively well, he said. She was mentally sharp and physically strong. The danger for her was losing what she had. The single most serious threat she faced was not the lung nodule or the back pain. It was falling. Each year, about three hundred and fifty thousand Americans fall and break a hip. Of those, forty per cent end up in a nursing home, and twenty per cent are never able to walk again. The three primary risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications, and muscle weakness. Elderly people without these risk factors have a twelve-per-cent chance of falling in a year.
I can’t imagine healthcare professionals not being obsessed with this feature, let alone insurance companies! Like I said, fall detection is a big deal.
3
Apple’s Heart Study is the start of something truly amazing.
There is, I’m sure, so much that could be said about the Apple Heart Study (conducted in association with Stanford Medicine.) As a non-doctor and non-scientist, I am the least qualified to comment on the study’s significance when it comes to the results and findings (I’ll leave that to my amazing colleague Dr. Nadine Nehme), so I’ll comment on what struck me the most instead.
400k+ participants.
Almost half a million people. While I’m not especially familiar with the scale and reach of health studies, the number did feel staggering, and after some quick research, the number was indeed amazing. Apart from large-scale government studies, the ability of any one private entity to reach so many participants in such a short period of time is amazing.
I think of this as an exciting indicator of the role of technology can play in solving healthcare problems at scale. The natural ability of a private tech company to scale a healthcare study of this kind is truly inspiring. This is real impact. A sense of excitement came over me as I contemplated that figure, a reminder of my deep belief in the work we’re doing at Medicus AI.
With the announcement of its platform for health studies, including 3 new exciting ones, Apple’s Research app is a game-changer for health researchers stuck in an otherwise lethargic and legacy-driven ecosystem. I particularly look forward to seeing where this goes and grows…
4
Apple invests in the underinvested. Yes, women, who happen to make up just over 50% of the population.
Apple’s focus on female health is one I paid particular attention to. A lot has been said about the lack of investment or research in product-design for women (read Invisible Women if you want to be alarmed and filled with a quiet rage.) Tech companies are also under scrutiny — even those dedicated to female health. Needless to say, I’m excited to see what they do with this important platform and study.
Finally, here’ a special mention from the critical communicator in me…
The video that Apple shared highlighting the impact of the Apple Watch as a health companion was emblematic of their amazing storytelling skills, and only 5% cheesy, which happens to be the perfect amount for nostalgic elder millennials and Facebook-obsessed baby boomers. Focused on the user, it serves as a sobering reminder for all health tech companies: there are humans, and in most cases sick humans, on the other end of every product and user experience. Needless to say, we share this obsession.
