Apple’s Next Big Health Leap: From ‘AI Doctor’ to ‘Health+’
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Apple is working on an overhaul of the Health app for next year — a revamp expected to introduce a new “Health+” service featuring an AI assistant. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said the new service “could make Apple one of the first major tech companies to gain steam in the health AI chatbot space.”
Gurman’s comments came in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter:
But let’s focus on a feature I haven’t discussed in a while: a revamped Health app with a new Health+ service. It will include an AI agent that helps users manage their health. If successful, the service could make Apple one of the first major tech companies to gain steam in the health AI chatbot space.
Over the years, reports on a purported Apple “Health+” service have been all over the map. Some early reports believed Apple was building a subscription service for medical professionals that would give doctors real-time access to patients’ health data. At the time, it was presumed the new service would be an extension of Apple’s Health Records feature, which does the reverse — offering users seamless access to their medical records from participating hospitals and other medical institutions.
Then, two years ago, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple was working on several new health features for iOS 17, including a Health app for the iPad and a project code-named “Quartz” that would combine a dedicated app with a new subscription service to promote a healthy lifestyle, helping users build positive habits for exercise, eating, and sleep, and even track emotional well-being.
While some of those features did debut in iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 — including the new iPad Health app and a basic mood tracking tool — the broader AI-driven health coach didn’t materialize. Instead, it appeared that Apple stepped back to refocus its efforts on something even more ambitious — a so-called “AI doctor.” Gurman revealed that Project Quartz had morphed into “Project Mulberry,” which he said would be “powered by a new AI agent that would replicate — at least to some extent — a real doctor.”
In July, an Apple-supported health study published a new research paper that seemingly confirmed Apple’s efforts to develop large-scale AI models that can effectively analyze users’ health data by drawing inferences from aggregated historical information — without real-time monitoring.
Gurman expects to see Apple’s paid Apple Health+ service launch in 2026, offering an AI-based health coach for nutrition planning and medical advice. While he initially predicted the feature would debut alongside iOS 19.4 (now iOS 26.4), Gurman later revised that timeline to at least iOS 27, noting that the feature will be built directly into the Health app on iPhone and iPad.
Gurman did not predict any pricing structure for the new service or whether Apple would include it as a part of its Apple One services bundle. However, as we recently reported, Gurman also mentioned that Apple Fitness+ is at a crossroads within Apple due to an executive reshuffle that now puts it under health services, rather than parallel to it. This could pave the way for a combined service that brings Fitness+ and Health+ under a common umbrella.
